Patent ID: 7596497

Claim:
A speech synthesis apparatus comprising: waveform generating means for generating a plurality of pitch waveforms, each for a formant; one-pitch waveform generating means for adding the plurality of pitch waveforms for the formants to generate a one-pitch waveform; and overlapping means for overlapping a plurality of said one-pitch waveforms to synthesize speech; said waveform generating means including: band characteristics waveform storage means having stored therein a plurality of band characteristics waveforms in a time domain, each having a band limited so as to be less than a preset frequency; band characteristics waveform readout means for reading out said band characteristics waveforms, stored in said band characteristics waveform storage means at a desired readout interval, to output a plurality of band characteristics readout waveforms, expanded or contracted along a time axis; sine wave outputting means for outputting a sine wave; and multiplication means for multiplying said plurality of band characteristics readout waveforms with said sine wave to output a resulting waveform; each band characteristics waveform is read out of said storage means at an interval that is based at least on a ratio of a first bandwidth to a second bandwidth, the first bandwidth being a formant bandwidth of the corresponding formant supplied from a source external to the waveform generating means and the second bandwidth being a fundamental bandwidth of the corresponding band characteristic waveform.