A laminate having excellent sound absorbing performance in both of a low frequency range and a high frequency range, and is excellent in flexibility, includes a woven fabric layer and a nonwoven fabric layer. The woven fabric layer contains a fiber having a total fineness of 150 to 500 dtex in an amount of 40% by mass or more based on the woven fabric layer in total, a value obtained by dividing a difference between a weave density in a warp direction of the woven fabric layer and a weave density in a weft direction of the woven fabric layer by a smaller one of the weave density in the warp direction of the woven fabric layer and the weave density in the weft direction of the woven fabric layer is 0.5 to 3.5. The woven fabric layer has a basis weight of 100 to 400 g/m.sup.2, a thickness of 0.3 to 2.0 mm, and an air permeability of 15 to 40 cm.sup.3/cm.sup.2/s. The nonwoven fabric layer has a basis weight of 200 to 500 g/m.sup.2 and a thickness of 5 to 40 mm.

A sound absorbing device includes an acoustic resonator with an opening and at least one fabric layer extending across the opening. The at least one fabric layer includes reversible actuatable liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) fibers such that an average pore size of the at least one fabric layer increases with decreasing temperature and decreases with increasing temperature. The sound absorbing device also includes at least one of a heater configured to heat the at least one fabric layer such that the average pore size of the at least one fabric decreases and a cooler configured to cool the at least one fabric layer such that the average pore size of the at least one fabric increases. And in some variations a controller configured to command the heater to heat to the at least one fabric layer and command the cooler to cool the at least one fabric layer is included.

A laminate having excellent sound absorbing performance in both of a low frequency range and a high frequency range, and is excellent in flexibility, includes a woven fabric layer and a nonwoven fabric layer. The woven fabric layer contains a fiber having a total fineness of 150 to 500 dtex in an amount of 40% by mass or more based on the woven fabric layer in total, a value obtained by dividing a difference between a weave density in a warp direction of the woven fabric layer and a weave density in a weft direction of the woven fabric layer by a smaller one of the weave density in the warp direction of the woven fabric layer and the weave density in the weft direction of the woven fabric layer is 0.5 to 3.5. The woven fabric layer has a basis weight of 100 to 400 g/m.sup.2, a thickness of 0.3 to 2.0 mm, and an air permeability of 15 to 40 cm.sup.3/cm.sup.2/s. The nonwoven fabric layer has a basis weight of 200 to 500 g/m.sup.2 and a thickness of 5 to 40 mm.