This is a very complicated question which depends on the state of the art of the hardware, the loudness of the sound, the speed of the listening vessel and the "acoustic weather" in the water which is affected by salinity, temperature, currents, surface weather, etc. Further there is the issue of direct signals and the reflected signals from the convergence zone. The propagation of sound waves in water is similar to short wave radio waves in the atmosphere. At short distances, one gets the direct signal while at long ranges one gets a reflected signal. In water, this means a sound can be heard directly at something like 20 nautical miles with modern equipment. It can also be heard if it is in the convergence zones (CZ) which are circular bands a few miles wide about 30, 60, 90, etc. nautical miles away from the listener. The CZ effect was not well explored until after WWII.

The best German WWII passive sonar could hear explosions out to two convergence zones, convoys at one CZ and single ships out to about 10 nautical miles, assuming good acoustic weather. Post war analog sonar did not do much better than that. A major improvement came with digital signal processing which now allows direct ranges of over 20 nautical miles and can hear ships out to at least three convergence zones.

The range of active sonar adds the power of the ping signal to the above variables, but active sonar apparently does not work at CZ ranges.

Regards,
SuperKraut