Voice Synthesis Apparatus

An apparatus for synthesizing a voice signal using a plurality of phonetic piece data each indicating a phonetic piece which contains at least two phoneme sections corresponding to different phonemes, the apparatus comprising;

• a phonetic piece adjustment part that forms a target section from a first phonetic piece and a second phonetic piece so as to connect the first phonetic piece and the second phonetic piece to each other such that the target section is formed of a rear phoneme section of the first phonetic piece corresponding to a consonant phoneme and a front phoneme section of the second phonetic piece corresponding to the consonant phoneme, and that carries out an expansion process for expanding the target section by a target time length to form an adjustment section such that a central part of the target section is expanded at an expansion rate higher than that of a front part and a rear part of the target section, to thereby create synthesized phonetic piece data of the adjustment section having the target time length and corresponding to the consonant phoneme;
• and
• a voice synthesis part that creates a voice signal from the synthesized phonetic piece data created by the phonetic piece adjustment part.