Patent ID: 8041060

Claim:
A surround-sound system comprising: a speaker array which has a plurality of speaker units and outputs sound beams of a plurality of channels so that the sound beams are transmitted directly to a listening position or the sound beams reflected by walls are transmitted to the listening position; a signal processing unit which generates driving signals from audio signals of the plurality of channels, the driving signals driving the plurality of speaker units so that audio beams corresponding to the audio signals of the plurality of channels are output from the speaker array in predetermined output directions; a sound pickup unit which senses sound pressure in the listening position in front of the speaker array; a control unit which controls to rotate the output directions of the sound beams output from the speaker array; and an output direction determination unit which determines the output directions of the sound beams of at least a part of the plurality of channels in the speaker array based on a change of the sound pressure sensed by the sound pickup unit when the output directions of the sound beams are rotated, wherein when there are channels whose output directions of the sound beams cannot be determined based on the change of the sensed sound pressure, the output direction determination unit calculates the output directions of the sound beams of the channels which cannot be determined, based on the output directions of the sound beams of the determined channels.