The invention is a method and apparatus for acoustic logging including one or more acoustic transmitters and one or more acoustic receivers. One or more of the elements of a set made up of the acoustic receivers and acoustic transmitters are spaced radially apart from one or more of the remaining elements of the set. The acoustic receivers and acoustic transmitters are configured along with electronics and software incorporated in the tool to allow the acoustic receivers and acoustic transmitters to act as multi-pole receivers and multi-pole transmitters, respectively. The tool is configured to compute one or more acoustic velocities and to provide storage for unprocessed and processed, compressed and error correction coded data. The tool is configured to provide the data for transmission to the surface.