Passive acoustic methods to measure bedload transport in water courses have received increasing attention in the scientific community during the last decade or so. It is generally accepted that these techniques need to be calibrated. Several studies are summarized here which used one of the following acoustic measuring systems: Swiss impact plate geophone, Japanese pipe hydrophone, other impact plate systems, and underwater microphones. Many of these acoustic measuring techniques were applied and tested not only in a laboratory environment but also in natural streams at sites where independent, direct bedload transport measurements were available. Some of these acoustic measuring systems were successfully calibrated for total bedload flux under field conditions. More recent investigations also considered the possibility to extract information on grain-size classes from the acoustic signal. This review furthermore points out important issues related to system calibration and discusses some operational aspects to be considered for different systems.