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This work belongs to the ongoing debate surrounding the mechanism responsible for low-angle sound emission from subsonic jets. The flow, simulated by large eddy simulation (Bogey & Bailly, Comput. Fluids, vol. 35 (10), 2006a, pp. 1344-1358, is a Mach 0.9 jet with Reynolds number, based on the exit diameter, of 4 × 10 5 . A methodology is implemented to educe, explore and model the flow motions associated with low-angle sound radiation. The eduction procedure, which is based on frequency-wavenumber filtering of the sound field and subsequent conditional analysis of the turbulent jet, provides access to space-and time-dependent (hydrodynamic) pressure and velocity fields. Analysis of these shows the low-angle sound emission to be underpinned by dynamics comprising space and time modulation of axially coherent wavepackets: temporally localized energization of wavepackets is observed to be correlated with the generation of high-amplitude acoustic bursts. Quantitative validation is provided by means of a simplified line-source Ansatz (Cavalieri et al. J. Sound Vib., vol. 330, 2011b, pp. 4474-4492). The dynamic nature of the educed field is then assessed using linear stability theory (LST). The educed pressure and velocity fields are found to compare well with LST: the radial structures of these match the corresponding LST eigenfunctions; the axial evolutions of their fluctuation energy are consistent with the LST amplification rates; and the relative amplitudes of the pressure and velocity fluctuations, which are educed independently of one another, are consistent with LST.