Abstract This study investigates the instability of distilled water drops under acoustic levitation induced by the movement of a reflector toward the transducer. The experimental setup consisted of a passive concave reflector and a Langevin transducer in a uniaxial-resonance configuration. The experiment consists of achieving a stable levitation of the droplet and then moving the reflector constantly toward the transducer, shortening the distance h between them (reflector-transducer). All experiments were recorded using a high-speed camera to analyze the drop’s behavior. The results revealed three distinct instabilities: radial atomization occurred when the drop volume (VD ) was ≤ 3.74 μl, beyond which central atomization was observed. A third instability is observed when a low reflector velocity (Vr < 0.67 mm/s) is used, where the droplet exhibited modes of oscillation with pulsed central atomization.