Review

Petunia & Petunia Player

$29.95 & $14.95

HUH Electronics
1429 Maple Street
San Mateo, CA 94402

PETUNIA is a 4-voice music system which delivers "Chamberlin type" (see "BYTE" SEPTEMBER, 1977) music through your amplifier-speaker system. The PETUNIA board plugs into your parallel user port and your 2nd cassette interface. A minimal amount of coding and documentation is provided with the PETUNIA which (unless you want to do a lot of work from scratch) is why you will want to also purchase the PETUNIA PLAYER.

The PETUNIA PLAYER is a program on cassette which plays several sample songs and also allows you to code in music of your own. The coding required to enter your own music is simple enough, but tedious.

The sound generated is full and rich—very organ like in timbre—you will want to play it through a hi-fi system rather than the small speaker-amplifiers many of us have been using with the CB2 sound.

The music I found easiest to code in and the most satisfying to play is music arranged for choral groups e.g. (S.A.T.B. or T.T.B.B.). These seem to fit the four voices of the PETUNIA best.

I found it very simple to add another jack and two wires to the board so that I can implement the CB2 (Per Gazette conventions) sound without removing the PETUNIA board each time.

If you are interested in computer music and don't mind the translating from sheet music, the PETUNIA & PETUNIA PLAYER combination may be for you.

by Dr. Matarella