Abstract: Understanding and describing aerodynamic noise phenomena at high speed of an object has always been a basic and difficult problem to explore, especially, there is a lack of effective means to describe the generation of sound sources and sound radiation on the surface of an object and its vicinity. In this study, the flow around a cylinder is taken as the research object, and combined with the numerical simulation method, the source term of the vortex sound equation is used to describe the sound source characteristics, and a method of source identification is established. The research shows that the sound source described by this method has the phenomenon that sound sources appear in the position where the sound sources are not supposed to have. Based on the vector wave equation of the velocity of acoustic particle, the intensity levels and locations of aerodynamic noise sources in the flow around a cylinder can be identified more accurately. This study not only explores the method of identifying the aerodynamic noise sources in the flow around a cylinder, but also provides an effective method for accurately identifying the characteristics of aerodynamic noise sources.