The majority of geophones are used in reflection seimology to record the energy waves reflected by the subsurface geology. In this case the primary interest is in the vertical motion of the Earth's surface. However, not all the waves are upwards travelling. A strong, horizontally transmitted wave known as ground-roll also generates vertical motion that can obliterate the weaker vertical signals. By using large areal arrays tuned to the wavelength of the ground-roll the dominant noise signals can be attenuated and the weaker data signals reinforced.

Analog geophones are very sensitive devices which can respond to very distant tremors. These small signals can be drowned by larger signals from local sources. It is possible though to recover the small signals caused by large but distant events by correlating signals from several geophones deployed in an array. Signals which are registered only at one or few geophones can be attributed to unwanted, local events and thus discarded. It can be assumed that small signals that register uniformly at all geophones in an array can be attributed to a distant and therefore significant event.