Search vessels have been scouring the southern Indian Ocean for traces of the vanished plane.
Angus Houston, the head of a joint agency coordinating the search, warned that it could take days to confirm if the signals picked up by Australian navy ship Ocean Shield are from the flight recorders on MH370.
"Clearly this is a most promising lead, and probably in the search so far, it's probably the best information that we have had," Houston said.
"We've got a visual indication on a screen and we've also got an audible signal – and the audible signal sounds to me just like an emergency locator beacon."
The two black boxes, which contain flight data and cockpit voice recordings, are the key to unraveling exactly what happened to Flight 370 and why.
There is little time left to locate the devices, which have beacons that emit "pings" so they can be more easily found, as their batteries last only about a month.
Tuesday marks exactly one month since the plane disappeared during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.
The Australian ship is carrying high-tech sound detectors from the U.S. Navy and picked up two separate signals late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.
The first signal lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost. The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again – this time recording two distinct "pinger returns" that lasted 13 minutes.
"Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder," Houston said.
SEARCH: The Chinese believe they have found signals 345miles from where the Australians have [EPA] 
SEARCH: Ocean Shield found signals that could be promising [EPA] "I would want more confirmation before we say this is it," he said. "Without wreckage, we can't say it's definitely here. We've got to go down and have a look."
The Ocean Shield was slowly canvassing a small area trying to find the signal again on Monday, something that could take another day to complete, Matthews said.
"It's like playing hot and cold when you're searching for something and someone's telling you you're getting warmer and warmer and warmer," he said.
"When you're right on top of it you get a good return." If they pick up the signal again, the crew will launch an underwater autonomous vehicle to investigate further, Matthews said. Officials warned the mystery of Flight 370 would still take time to resolve.
"It could take some days before the information is available to establish whether these detections can be confirmed as being from MH370," Houston said. "In very deep oceanic water, nothing happens fast."
But, a Chinese ship has picked up signals 345miles from the Australian search efforts. The British HMS Echo, which is fitted with sophisticated sound-locating equipment, was trying to determine whether the two separate sounds are related to the plane.
Patrol vessel Haixun 01 first detected a brief "pulse signal" on Friday, and a second signal on Saturday.
The crew of the Chinese ship reportedly picked up the signals using a sonar device called a hydrophone dangled over the side of a small boat – something experts said was technically possible but extremely unlikely.
The equipment aboard the British and Australian ships is dragged slowly behind each vessel over long distances and is considered far more sophisticated.
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