Patent ID: 8165882

Claim:
A speech synthesis apparatus for concatenating a plurality of unit waveforms to generate synthesized speech, said apparatus comprising: a conversion section that converts a sampling rate of said unit waveform; a decimation section that decimates the unit waveform that undergoes the conversion of the sampling rate to the sampling rate of a synthesized speech; and a waveform synthesis section that generates the synthesized speech using the decimated unit waveform, wherein said conversion section changes a conversion ratio of the sampling rate based on input prosodic information, wherein said conversion section derives a pitch frequency from the prosodic information and increases a value of said conversion ratio to a higher value when the pitch frequency is of a relatively high value, wherein said conversion section derives a position of pitch synchronization from said pitch frequency and uses the value of the conversion ratio which relatively reduces an error in the position of pitch synchronization, wherein the error is the difference between the position of pitch synchronization as found by a pitch synchronization position calculation section and a waveform center position of the waveform as selected out of sampling-rate-converted unit waveforms.