Patent ID: 8792666

Claim:
An acoustic apparatus for a listener sitting in a seat, comprising: a directional loudspeaker arranged so as to face toward the listener; a detection part for detecting whether or not the head of the listener is present within an audible area of the directional loudspeaker; and a controller for controlling the magnitude of the audio output from the directional loudspeaker; wherein the controller stops or reduces the audio output when the detection part has detected that the head of the listener is not present within the audible area of the directional loudspeaker; the seat in which the listener sits includes a backrest and a reclining function for changing a reclining angle of the backrest; a seat in front of and adjacent to the seat in which the listener sits includes a backrest with the directional loudspeaker installed in a back surface thereof, and the reclining function for changing a reclining angle of the backrest; and the detection part detects whether or not the head of the listener is present within the audible area of the directional speaker, based on an angle difference between the reclining angle of the backrest of the seat in which the listener sits and the reclining angle of the backrest of the front adjacent seat.