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| 03-31-06 / 11:41 PM : Kontakt : 2.1 update soon (cjed) |
| In synchro with the Kontakt 2 Player launch, NI announced there will be a 2.1 update for Kontakt late april. It will bring enhancements : in performance (shorter loading times, less memory usage, lower processor load, better multi-processor support), audio quality (new interpolation algorithm for transposition), as well as new features (better search, customizable layout, new effects - limiter, compressor, pseudo stereo). |
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| 03-31-06 / 02:22 AM : Yamaha GO46 : Mobile Firewire 24/192 (cjed) |
| Yamaha presented at the Musikmesse a new interesting Firewire interface, the GO46. At 439 $, it brings 24 bits / 192 Khz convertors(probably great as we are used with Yamaha), 4 ins / 6 outs, and allows to simultaneously record guitar and voice (one unpowered input and one phantom powered), and even route signal to external insert effects module. Why not add to this the new Lexicon MX200, derived from the MPX100/110... |
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| 03-31-06 / 02:10 AM : Moog Little Phatty : new analog synth (cjed) |
 Announced recently on the Moog site, the new analog synth of the company was unveiled during the MusikMesse. It is priced 1475 $. For more informations and nice pictures, it is here. Next week audio demos will be available on the Moog site. |
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| 03-30-06 / 01:19 AM : Steinberg HALion Symphonic Orchestra (cjed) |
 During the Musikmesse, Steinberg unveiled HALion Symphonic Orchestra, that includes 27 Go orchestral samples (french description available at audiofanzine). We can listen to cool demos at Steinberg's site. |
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| 03-30-06 / 12:41 AM : Kontakt Player 2 (cjed) |
| Native Instruments presents Kontakt Player 2, a limited version of Kontakt 2 (same engine but less editing possibilities, and limited to the sample library it is bundled with). in this it will replace Kompakt and Intakt. Three products based on it are announced : Stradivari Solo Violin from Gary Garritan, Chris Hein Guitars from Best Service, and OTTO from Fixed Noise. It would be interesting to compare a library under Kontakt 2 Player against the same under full Kontakt 2 version. |
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| 03-29-06 / 02:31 AM : Comments are now open to all (cjed) |
| You can now post comments without being logged (no account required anymore). You just have to report the generated image code (protection against bots/spam). |
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| 03-28-06 / 01:29 AM : SketchFighter : a sketch rendered shoot them up (cjed) |
 InsideMacGame presents SketchFighter, a game with a new concept. In this shoot them up, no 3D nor textures, only pure sketch style graphics. We can look at two videos to understand the interest in an animation manner. It is the same philosophy as in Renaissance movie... but far more mastered. |
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| 03-28-06 / 01:12 AM : Racer : freeware game updated (cjed) |
 Racer, a famous freeware car simulation game, is out in a new version (0.5.3b1.5). It is here for screenshots and download. |
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| 03-28-06 / 12:42 AM : Apple : number one (cjed) |
| Macgeneration.com reported that Apple ranks 1st place among year top performers, in an review made by Business Week. It is here. |
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| 03-28-06 / 12:35 AM : Mac mini CoreDuo and games (cjed) |
| Ludomac provides a test of mac mini CoreDuo in a gaming perspective. For universal binary games the old powerbook G4 1,67 does close to two times better, with just one processor. For games played through Rosetta emulation it crashes or it is unplayable (it was expected however). By focusing on the integrated Intel video chipset responsible for the poor performances, we may hope Apple will not persevere for the next revision. |
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| 03-28-06 / 12:19 AM : IK Multimedia : Sonic Refills demos (cjed) |
| IK Multimedia provides demo patchs of its Sonic Refills collection. They can be downloaded in the download area of their site (among these are also mp3 demos, at the bottom of the page). |
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| 03-27-06 / 11:52 PM : Microsoft : the crisis (cjed) |
| Macnn reported that Windows VISTA delay is only partially due to security problems (which alone is yet inadmissible), in fact there are numerous bugs plaging the whole system, notably in the media center features. Microsoft employees, upsets by efforts asked to them last months and by the recent delay in VISTA, asked the resignation of CEO Steve Balmer. Another proof billions do not make all, motivation an genius are random things. |
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| 03-27-06 / 11:36 PM : Retro Gaming, PacMan, MAME, ATARI Connexion 2006 (cjed) |
 To follow up in the retro gaming theme, we learn that Pacman is 25 years old, MAME reaches version 100 (was first presented around 1995), a new magazine - Retro Gaming - is out (the first edition is rewieved by Grospixels.com), and april 22 & 23 will debut next to Paris the ATARI Connexion 2006 (meanwhile we can look at photos taken at the past Jaguar Connexion 20005, collector hardware here !). |
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| 03-27-06 / 11:18 PM : Golgoth 13 : retromusic (cjed) |
 Grospixels provides an article about Golgoth 13... a music band that uses old school style sounds (C64). We can listen to some of their songs there. |
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| 03-27-06 / 10:18 PM : Berenice and top 100 games developers (cjed) |
 As reported Macbidouille, the site macaj.net, targeted to recent and past games, is back. We found here a link to a comprehensive test made by grospixels.com about the legendary game The Dark Eye : based upon novels from Edgar Poe, with musics from Thomas Dolby and a great traduction, this game (was out in 1996) was among my bests.We can also take a look at The hot 100 games developers, a short presentation of famoust games creators. |
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| 03-24-06 / 11:54 PM : Windows Vista delayed / OSX has 5 years ! (cjed) |
| While Microsoft annouces a delay in Windows Vista (despite their 4000 engineers... and cool ideas given by Apple), MacOSX reaches its 5 years ! We can look at the 5 majors evolutions of OSX on l'aventure Apple. Hopefully for Microsoft, Apple will soon release Leopard (OSX 10.5), that will brings some new ideas. Perhaps it is the reason why Apple choosed to delay the World Wide Developper Conference two months later... |
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| 03-23-06 / 11:13 PM : GDC 06 : Unreal Engine 3 / UT2007 (cjed) |
| We can read in this article first reactions from UT2007 demonstrations made at the GDC 2006. |
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| 03-23-06 / 11:06 PM : Halo Graphic Novel (cjed) |
| As writed macgamezone, Bungie will edit a graphic novel about Halo (color, 128p, one big story and three shorter tales) ! Its is here. |
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| 03-23-06 / 10:38 PM : Radio France : contest for gentle artists (cjed) |
| Macbidouille reported the launch of a sound creation contest from Radio-France (the theme is spring). Prices are a joke (ipods) for such a contest, and on forums we all readed carrefully the user licence that has to be signed by artists : you give full rights to use the creation for 2 years (do not explicitely exclude commercial use). This is, on one hand editors make much money and/or engage pursuits against customers (DAVSI law), and on another hand they ask artists to give music for nothing (yep, me too !), or they recruit eastern "law cost" composers... Hopefully there is the SNAC :) s |
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| 03-23-06 / 01:57 AM : Site stats : blazzing fast progression (cjed) |
 Since last weeks site progression (number of hits/visits) made a huge gap (the grow was somewhat linear during the first 6 months). Indexation robots Googlebots, MSN, and e-Society come far much often, and accesses from France now only represent 50% (40% from US). I made a chart showing visits per month progression, using the great Chartsmith ( png | jpg ).s |
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| 03-23-06 / 12:51 AM : Samchillian : a new way to play (cjed) |
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| 03-23-06 / 12:30 AM : Apple makes fast Windows PCs (cjed) |
| In this article we can look at benchs made on Intel Macs running under Windows XP. Links to similar benchs from regular PCs are provided. Apple did great for a first try ! |
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| 03-22-06 / 10:14 PM : Playlist at musique-libre.org (cjed) |
| To made it more comfortable, i suggest you to listen to the songs through the playlist available on my page at musique-libre.org (so you don't have to click on each file, you can however skip/select a song). The songs there link to the same files on my site. It was streamed 3000 times. Emotional reached rank 425 from a total of 5000 songs at musique-libre, not so bad with just one user having rated it (clicks also do count). So don't forget to rate the songs if you like them (you have to be logged, but it's easy to open an account on musique-libre) ! |
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| 03-22-06 / 02:30 AM : A Piano variation (cjed) |
 Here is a piano variation, played with a bass, a violins section, a solo violin, all quantize less :PVariant.mp3 |
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| 03-21-06 / 11:30 PM : Quake 1.1 GL OSX (cjed) |
| Another enhanced version of the first Quake game, for OSX, it is here. Original files are required as expected. |
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| 03-21-06 / 08:39 PM : Apple - DAVSI : french's left behind ? (cjed) |
| Macbidouille pointed out this article that manages to explore possible reactions to french DAVSI law. Jobs could simply close the ITMS to french customers to avoid unveiling its Fairplay DRMs. It would however be a gift to its local competitors, Fnac and Sony (will also have to unveil its DRM system), that weren't able to catch up with Apple despite french people conservatism.s |
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| 03-17-06 / 11:18 PM : OscarWide (cjed) |
| Surprise, there is an unpublished song from late 2005 (progressive alternative ambiant :) : OscarWide.mp3 |
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| 03-17-06 / 10:50 PM : PBreak : another Piano & Orch song (cjed) |
| Here is PBreak (not related to Point Break), a quick made Piano/Orch song that reminds me the theme of TombRaider 4, by means of the strings section anb oboe glissando : PBreak.mp3 |
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| 03-17-06 / 09:29 PM : New stunning Apple ad (cjed) |
| There is a new Apple ad here for iPod, stunning. |
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| 03-17-06 / 12:56 AM : Roland SRX12 Classic EPs (cjed) |
| Roland unveiled, without much publicity, a new SRX card, the SRX12 Classic EPs, that brings electric piano sounds. We can watch a video here. |
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| 03-17-06 / 12:12 AM : Fantom-X and XV editors for OSX (cjed) |
| The site Fantomized provides links to last versions of editors for Fantom X and XV, that now run under OSX !s |
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| 03-16-06 / 11:49 PM : Outnumbered : a great Nanosaur like game (cjed) |
 OneSadCookie provides a stunning freeware game, Outnumbered, that reminds me Nanosaur and Bugdom (we play again bugs), the 3D engine is very close. Animation is original, as was Lugaru in another area. This game participates in the OMG contest. |
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| 03-16-06 / 11:26 PM : Présence PC contest : win a MacMini CoreDuo (cjed) |
| Présence PC site opened a contest to win... a mac min Core Duo ! It is here and the question is obvious. There is also an ipod in game, as in all contests... |
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| 03-16-06 / 10:35 PM : XP on MacIntel contest won (cjed) |
| Less than two months after the introduction of MacIntels, the famous contest aimed at booting Windows XP on these machines has been won (the amount of donations rised 14000 $). The solution comes from unsing BAMBIOS, an EFI program that emulates an old BIOS. |
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| 03-13-06 / 12:25 AM : Korg SP250 demos (cjed) |
| Korg made available some demos of its new affordable digital piano, the SP250 (799 euros). To compare with the play from the Roland Complete Piano card, an (old) Kurzweil PC1 and recent softwares (Akoustik Piano, The Grand2) read this old news. We can also listen again to same songs (Entertainer, Fantaisie, Traumerei) played with the Roland card, in the arrangements section. Roland's sounds better, but it contains 64 Mo samples on 4 velocity levels, compared with only 12 Mo for the Korg. Only the Roland RD700SX (2000 euros indeed) could do better (has same samples but added sympathetic resonance and better converters than the XV5050 ones). However, for having tested the SP250 friday at Star's music, i find it very attractive, the keys come back sooner than with the RD700SX (acclaimed for its keyboard). Among medium range digital pianos we also tried the new Yamaha P140S (1200 euros), very nice looking, great sound and perfect keyboard. The new Kawai ES4 was off so we cannot conclude. |
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| 03-13-06 / 12:00 AM : Windows on MacIntel : last news (cjed) |
| Macwindows site makes a bilan on last developments aimed at running Windows on MacIntel (problem of the lack of EFI support from XP). For now the only solution is to run Windows through a regular PC emulation program, but ported to universal binary (Intel native). However performance is not optimal due to hooks, and DirectX is not managed. So we still have few months to wait for Vista, that will bring EFI support, not so bad ! |
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| 03-12-06 / 11:17 PM : John Lennon expo (Cité de la Musique) (cjed) |
 We can visit at the Cité de la Musique an exposition upon John Lennon, Unfinished Music. It unveils songs writings, sarcastics drawings made at classroom, school results, many instruments, documentary and movies. We will omit speaking about Lennon's wife Yoko Ono arts, border line... There is some photos taken at the expo : a piano with digital system to stop hammers (mute sound) and route sound through an electronic device. We tested it, through the headphones, it is a bit harsh and metallic, but sound release is good). Then there is a tree with messages from visitors, and an authentic Juke Box, very cool. Many guitars and some keyboards (among them there is a Vox from Continental, famous for its black keys where they normally are white). The most interesting is the reconstitution of a recording studio from 60's. We can see on the photos an AKG 240 Studio headphones :), thas was created in 1960 ! |
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| 03-11-06 / 01:17 AM : Nord Stage : the must ? (cjed) |
 The introduction of the new Clavia Nord Stage scene instrument was not made in fanfare. However there is growing noise about it, first from its keyboard quality (that is also for 3000 $...) Among other it onboards Yamaha C7 and Steinway D sharp sounding pianos, the sound is very fat, the converters are great, and the feel of the keyboard is acclaimed.Moreover it adds an organ section and a synthesis module (substractive, FM, wave table - presets derived from the Nord Lead). The demos are great, notably the last three, even if the sound seems over "chorused". Some comments that have to be read on Audiofanzine, and other demos on a personnal site. |
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| 03-10-06 / 09:56 PM : IE sucks : how the site renders on Safari/Firefox (cjed) |
| Definitively IE is a pain. Rendering of the site (under Windows) in it is awful : aliased fonts, darker colors, too much space in underline and between paragraphs, bug in css menus display, does not manage RSS syndication. Here is what it looks like under OSX, from Safari and Firefox. Despite different display engines (KHMTL vs Gecko), their rendering is very close (except controls - buttons, lists - replaced with native Aqua widgets under Safari). Hopefully Firefox on Windows somewhat looks acceptable. |
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| 03-10-06 / 02:10 AM : Continue : PangeB (cjed) |
| To follow on the Pangea theme, there is PangeB ! PangeB.mp3 |
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| 03-09-06 / 11:36 PM : Precisionsound Stingers : jingles (cjed) |
 Precisionsound presents Stingers, an ensemble of 80 sound effects dedicated to jingles making. It weights between 50 and 100 Mo depending the audio format (16 or 24 bits sample size), and costs 69$, that is expensive nowdays for a library of that size. An audio demo is available on the product page. |
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| 03-09-06 / 10:30 PM : Windows Vista resembles OS X : dont' click ! (cjed) |
| Macnn gives a link to an article showing growing similarities (not to say inspirations) between upcoming Windows VISTA and MacOSX, not only from system features concerns, but also from utility applications (image viewer, etc.) We know this yet, and the author is not objective when he concludes the opposite way with this : Windows Vista is still Windows, however, and that means you can be far more productive with Vista than is possible with OS X, especially if you're a heavy keyboard user like me. Comments on macnn prove these arguments to be false, but the author could have triggered this reaction intentionally, when we see this comment : Don't click on the link! Don't go to his website; you'd be falling right into his plan. This guy makes a living by pissing off the Mac community and raking in the advertiser money from all the page hits generated. Just ignore Thurott if you want to make him go away.... Even if we shouldn't look towards paranoia, it is true there should be an interest in these recurrent articles... |
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| 03-09-06 / 03:16 AM : Slumbering : new age song (cjed) |
| Here is another simple new age song : Slumbering.mp3 |
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| 03-08-06 / 09:24 PM : A-OK! The Wings : Mercury spacecraft sim (cjed) |
 A-OK! The Wings of Mercury (Pyramid Design, 50$) is a simulation of the Mercury spacecraft. It features 3D graphics, fully functional control panels, and networked simulations. A demo version (72 Mo) is available. Version 3.6 brings among enhancements : improved higher resolution Earth models, global cloud cover, sun rises and sets causing day and night lighting conditions. |
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| 03-06-06 / 11:45 PM : Lugaru 2 on the way (cjed) |
| IMG gives some details on Lugaru 2, the sequel to the famous rabit combat fun game, with inedit animation. Lugura 2 will add approximations of motion blur and high-dynamic-range lighting. |
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| 03-06-06 / 09:31 PM : Apple article on Rhem2 / Agon (cjed) |
 Apple provides in its Games section an article about Rhem2, the famous Myst clone (to my point i was never impressed by graphics of first Rhem). However they also present Agon, another Myst like game, made by another company (Private Moon Studios), that looks far more better (reminds me the legendary Maupity Island on ST !) There is also some walkthrough, among them one for Myst V (i will be back on it as soon as i finish Doom 3 :) |
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| 03-05-06 / 01:03 PM : iPod Hifi : impressions (cjed) |
| To start, there is a slideshow from ipod Hifi made with iWeb (Ajax technology). Then we can watch on Cnet this video taken in first days of introduction, and finally read a detailed review, that brings in comparison the system with similar products from Bose and Altec Lansing. As expected, experience is here determinant (Bose case), but Apple's is always the most elegant if not the best sounding. |
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| 03-05-06 / 03:06 AM : Stairy song (cjed) |
| Here is a new epic song : Stairy.mp3 |
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| 03-04-06 / 12:39 PM : IK Classik Studio Reverb (cjed) |
 IK Multimedia also shipped last month Classik Studio Reverb , a pro software reverb (329 euros). It is there. After some search, i found audio demos on another site, esoundz. |
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| 03-04-06 / 12:19 PM : Miroslav Philharmonik reviews (cjed) |
 This week Macnn made an incursion in pro audio, reviewing Miroslav Philharmonik. We can also read a PDF article from musictechmag, or this very detailed review that provides custom arrangements samples from the author. At 379 euros on playback.fr, it could be a bargain thanks to included choirs, pianos (very well received), church organs, and some powerful percussions not found in SO Gold. It's true there is other great products in this price range, such as the famous String Essentials (399$), less exhaustive (only strings), but that contains the best sounding strings ensembles samples i have ever heard. |
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| 03-04-06 / 12:54 AM : Arturia Prophet 5/VS available (cjed) |
 The famous french audio company Arturia (the only one) provides some audio samples of its new product, an emulation of the Prophet 5/VS. This is here. Not only the software interface is superb, but the emulation is aimed at being sharper than with Native Instruments's Pro53. In fact we can read very positive comments from Nine Inch Nails and Toto in these pages.The sound "Prophet5 Phil Pad" and its accord progression reminds strangely my song Master3A_Room14 (93), however the later is much more subtile and offers more variations.s |
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| 03-02-06 / 10:08 PM : Installing Front Row on an unsupported mac (cjed) |
| There is a new cool guide about installing Front Row on an unsupported mac. |
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| 03-02-06 / 09:53 PM : MacBookPro VS Dell on OSX : ArsTechnica test (cjed) |
| The famous ArsTechnica published a very detailed comparison of the new MacBook Pro, against a Dell Inspiron 9100... running OSX (hacked version, basic drivers) or Windows (for tests involving multi-platform softwares). Scores from the old PowerBook G4 and the new Imac Core Duo are also given as reference. |
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| 03-02-06 / 09:33 PM : Sony Ericsson K790/K800 Review (cjed) |
| Macbidouille linked to a mobiles site that provides a very interesting review (in 3 parts) of new K790/K800 Sony Ericsson mobiles (new 3,2 megapixels camera module). This is here. It uses the new MemoryStick M2 format. |
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| 03-01-06 / 12:06 AM : Better than Minority Report (cjed) |
| Audiofanzine provides a link to a revolutionnary tactical screen ! |
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