The apparatus for manufacturing the nonwoven fabric contains at least one, and may contain up to forty or more, spinneret devices, such as rectangular spinneret plates or round spinneret disks. The spinneret devices may be arranged in rows or in staggered arrangement above a linearly moving collector belt. Spinning orifices on the spinneret devices are respectively dedicated to producing a monofilament or a bicomponent filament from a melt and, viewed in the direction of motion of the collector belt, are arranged with respect to one another so as to correspond in their totality to the cross sectional structure of different filament types in the nonwoven fabric.