Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Tomokazu Morio

Atsunori Kitoh

Yoshiji Fujimoto

Yasumoto Murata

Shuichi Yoshikawa

Shuichi Kawama

Yuji Nishiwaki

Osamu Kimura

A multiple-voice instructing unit () instructs pitch deforming ratio and mixing ratio to a multiple-voice synthesis unit (). The multiple voice synthesis unit () generates a standard voice signal by means of waveform superimposition based on voice element data read from a voice element database () and prosodic information from a voice element selecting unit (), expands/contracts the time base of the above standard voice signal based on the prosodic information and instruction information from the multiple-voice instructing unit () to change a voice pitch, and mixes the standard voice signal with an expansion/contraction voice signal for outputting via an output terminal (). Accordingly, a concurrent vocalization by multiple speakers based on the same text can be implemented without the need of time-division, parallel text analyzing and prosody generating and of adding pitch converting as post-processing.

Simultaneous plural-voice text-to-speech synthesizer

In a signal encoding device, a voice signal is divided into subsignals each comprising a predetermined number of successive samples, and data trains are generated by giving initial values to a recurrence equation. The generated data trains are divided into patterns each comprising the same number of samples as the predetermined number. The distance between each pattern produced by the pattern dividing unit and each of the subsignals are calculated. The pattern that provides the smallest distance with respect to each of the subsignals is identified, and the initial value set in the recurrence equation for generation of the data train that constitutes the pattern is output as coded data representing the respective subsignal.

Signal encoding device

A voice recording and reproducing apparatus which includes a voice encoder for encoding a voice signal into a voice code, an address counter, a voice code memory in which the voice code is circulatively stored as specified by the address counter, a discriminator for determining whether the voice signal inputted is a voiced signal or whether the voice signal inputted is a silent signal, and a register for storing an address value of the address counter when the discriminator indicates that the silent signal has changed into the voiced signal. During reproduction, the starting address of the reproduction is determined by a stored address. The stored address represents the address value in the address counter at the time when the discriminator indicates that a silent signal has changed to a voiced signal.

Voice recording and reproducing apparatus

A speech analyzing and synthesizing apparatus includes a sampling circuit for sampling an inputted speech signal, a speech analyzer for analyzing and coding the inputted speech signal, and a speech synthesizer for decoding the speech signal coded by said speech analyzer into a synthesized speech, whereby the average code length can be advantageously shortened to realize a low capacity memory and a well-analyzed and synthetized speech. Moreover, a speech recording apparatus is provided wherein a soundless section in the inputted speech signal is compressed by real time, and even a weak short-time portion in the sounded section of an inputted speech signal is not erroneously judged to be soundless, but is coded as a sounded portion.

Growing community of inventors

Nara, Japan

Tomokazu Morio