Sparse arrays (13) of ink droplet ejectors (14) are provided for acoustic printing. The arrays (13) are capable of performing at higher print rates than single ejector printheads because of their parallelism, and they avoid many of the design limitations of ordinary page-width arrays. The increased center-­to center spacing of the droplet ejectors (14) in these sparse arrays (13) significantly simplifies the design of acoustic-lens-type arrays, because larger lenses (14a-14i) and transducers (22) may be employed, thereby enabling the transducers (22) to operate at lower power densities, permitting the use of thicker substrates (21) for the lenses (14a-14i) while maintaining the diffraction of the acoustic power at a negligibly low level, and increasing the permissible focal length of the lenses (14a-14i) so as to permit the use of thicker layers of ink (17).