Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

MusE is a DAW for Linux with both MIDI and Audio editing. https://muse-sequencer.github.io

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Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

I just installed Muse4 from the App image. Using Bodhi Linux. My sound card is Delta 2496. Alsa works with that, I use it for internet radio for example. But I don't know how to make the connections for Muse. I do Midi, so I don't need heavy audio capacity. How do I route things? Do I route the Out to my soundcard, or system playback, or what? Do I need to bother with Jack? And then, what about my instruments? I have been trying various things, but no sound as of yet. I have the tutorial and general documentation bookmarked and have consulted it heavily, but I still can't figure it out. Routing is always a bugger for me when trying a new DAW!

Thanks,

michael
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by asbak »

There are many potential answers.

For many of us, one of those answers is to use jack when working with music & audio related software in Linux because it offers low-latency and flexible audio & midi routing options.

If you just want to get sound then go to wherever the sound and midi input / output settings are of the audio application and set it to pulseaudio and whatever your midi interface is to get started.

The Linux audio system of the future will probably be Pipewire, so you may want to investigate using that instead.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by oscillator »

mdiemer wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 4:25 am I just installed Muse4 from the App image. Using Bodhi Linux. My sound card is Delta 2496. Alsa works with that, I use it for internet radio for example. But I don't know how to make the connections for Muse. I do Midi, so I don't need heavy audio capacity.
Welcome to MusE, @mdiemer! :)
mdiemer wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 4:25 am How do I route things? Do I route the Out to my soundcard, or system playback, or what? Do I need to bother with Jack? And then, what about my instruments? I have been trying various things, but no sound as of yet. I have the tutorial and general documentation bookmarked and have consulted it heavily, but I still can't figure it out. Routing is always a bugger for me when trying a new DAW!
michael
The easiest way is just to run Muse4, then it will use ALSA, and you will get sound. You can use alsamixer so set output destination.

But if you plan to continue make music with GNU/Linux, you want to go the Jack way.

Here is a great article about what Jack is and how to handle it:
https://linuxaudio.github.io/libremusic ... -jack.html

I myself use QJackCtl to control Jack, it is great, and can show a graph view over your connections.

This is a screenshot after starting jack with QJackCtl, starting MusE and then clicking the Graph button in QJackCtl:
qjackctl_graphc.png
qjackctl_graphc.png (62.83 KiB) Viewed 6018 times
You install jackd2 from your package manager (Synaptic in my case, as I use Debian Stable).

Next download QJackCtl as an AppImage:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/qjackctl/files/

and run it.

Then you can run Muse4.

Next I would recommend a tutorial for MusE that I wrote some time ago. it is on the MusE wiki.
https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/ ... p-tutorial

Another path to follow is to install a distro of GNU/Linux that is already tweaked and configured to handle music. I haven't used this myself but heard great things about it:
https://www.bandshed.net/avlinux/

It also has a wonderful manual!
https://bandshed.net/pdf/AVL-MXE-User-Manual.pdf

Good luck and get back if you have any more questions! :)

MusE DAW running on Debian 11 Testing/XFCE4.
https://oscillator.se/musik

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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

Thanks Guys for the replies, but still no luck here. I just want to clarify something: If I only due midi, do I really need Jack? The folks on the Reaper forum (Linux Reaper) seem to be using mostly Alsa, for both midi and audio. I know they are two different DAWS so maybe Jack is better for Muse. I have never used it before so it's very confusing to me. I did manage to get sound, including a midi keyboard and soft synth (Kontakt Player) when I fooled with Reaper For Linux last Spring. and that was just using Alsa. Although that was on a different computer, with a Steinberg Ur-22 interface.

On the computer I'm using for this, I can only install very light distros. That's why I'm using Bodhi. The problem is with my graphics. It's an old Gateway dual core, but power is not the problem (3 Ghz CPU, 6GB ram). The on-board video is the problem. Bodhi 6 is based on Ubuntu 20.04. It has a very light desktop, which is why it works. I can't run anything heavier than LXDE on this machine. Bodhi itself uses Moksha, a fork of Enlightenment.

what I'm doing now is just experimental. If I find something that I think I can use, I'll install it on my music rig. Maybe using a USB interface will make things easier. but I would like to get Muse working on the old machine first if I can, so I can evaluate whether it makes sense putting it on my my main rig. So far, I can see how I can have a workflow very similar to Sonar. So I'm optimistic it can work for me.

I'll keep trying. It took me two weeks to get sound going on Reaper. I'm not giving up! I have looked at the documentation. The tutorial led me to a dead-end, page not found. I do have QJackctl and have set it to my interface and left the Alsa setting in place. but I must be doing something wrong with my routing. I'm doing the thing with Vam synth, and setting up a track for it it, clicking on the midi clip I drew per instructions (can't remember exactly where I came across that but that's the method I'm using). the keyboard pops up and I try the keys, but no sound. Is there an easier way to to do it? I have one of my midi projects imported, so there are plenty of midi tracks I can use. If that would be easier.

Thanks and sorry for being such a dope!

P.S. I have Musescore installed, and I do have sound in that, both playback as well as my midi keyboard, so it should be able to work on Muse as well. I'm going to look at Musescore's settings and see if I can learn anything from that.

P.P.S. OK Musescore is using just Alsa. Boxes fro Pulse and Jack are unchecked. So Alsa is working fine, for both playback and keyboard.
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by oscillator »

Hey, no need to excuse yourself!

The tutorial is also at:
https://www.oscillator.se/opensource/#muse

(@spamatica do you have access to the wiki and can change the links? Or is @kybos still with us?)

I think you will find the parts about workflow helpful!

Now, I think you can get along with just ALSA for what you are currently trying to achieve. Jack lets you do additonal things, that you don't need right now. And my experience is that MusE works just fine with just ALSA!

So, look through the tutorial and get back to us with more questions! Screenshots of configurations are always helpful, or photos of your setup.

BTW QJackCtl is only useful if you have previously installed jackd2.

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https://oscillator.se/musik

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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

I finally made a little progress. I went back into Muse3, and was able to do the synth test, and finally got sound. Then I looked at the Advanced Routing, and the Out went to System Playback. I saw that this was listed under Jack, so I then opened up Muse4 and duplicated these settings, first making Jack the default audio driver, since that was the case in the Muse3 test project (to get synth sound). So I have basic sound, using the Vam-O synth. Now I will try to get sound from my midi keyboard and midi tracks.

P.S. So far not having any luck with midi keyboard. It's a basic midi keyboard controller, no sound of its own. It's plugged into the sound card, the 2496 via breakout cables. It works OK in Musescore, so it should work in Muse. I just can't see how to connect it up.
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by asbak »

The answers to your questions vary with what exactly your requirements are, and your requirements will vary depending on what answers you receive and you then come to realize what possibilities are available. That's the conundrum. :mrgreen:

If you want to use MIDI with Muse, what exactly does that mean? Do you want to be able to play a MIDI controller and hear sound in real time coming from a softsynth on your computer, running as a plugin in Muse or even as an external softsynth that Muse sends MIDI to?

Do you just want to record MIDI events in MUSE and you don't care about latency when hearing the audio, or you don't even mind not hearing the notes you are playing while recording MIDI?

Do you just want to step record MIDI events?

Do you mean you only manually (with a computer keyboard & mouse) program MIDI events into Muse and play those back through a softsynth?
Or do you plan to use Muse to only play back MIDI notes to an external Hardware Synth?

Would it bother you to give exclusive control over the audio system to Muse (as some Reaper users on their forums were apparently doing) while you are working with MIDI (whatever that means?) and do you not mind losing the ability to use a web browser for audio, or lose access to other audio subsystems while you are busy with Muse?

The answers to all these kinds of questions, and questions you may not have thought about before, determine what solution you're really after.

To put it another way, to know what kind of solution you're after you need to first have the exact requirements nailed down, and to know the exact requirements you'll have to clearly define what you're trying to achieve and what your exact workflow is.

I can't speak for others or users on the Reaper forum, but I use jack and can MIDI route from anywhere to anywhere and route audio (including pulseaudio sources) from anywhere to anywhere and have them all available at the same time, all the time at low (imperceptable) audio latency.

My system is flexible and can cater to most if not all usage requirements. It is flexible because it allows the use of Jack + Alsa + even Pulseaudio.

Setting this up is not trivial, however. It is true that the Linux audio landscape is a confused mess from the perspective of a new user who just wants to get on with making music.

That's why I suggested taking a look at Pipewire and reading up on it, because Pipewire will be the future of Linux Audio and should be a simpler way to get achievable results.

One could use many different approaches which are all valid, and many are definitely worth learning about, but if I were starting out today and just wanted to get up and running asap I'd nuke pulseaudio from my system, install Pipewire and take things from there.
Last edited by asbak on Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by oscillator »

mdiemer wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 3:46 am I finally made a little progress. I went back into Muse3, and was able to do the synth test, and finally got sound. Then I looked at the Advanced Routing, and the Out went to System Playback. I saw that this was listed under Jack, so I then opened up Muse4 and duplicated these settings, first making Jack the default audio driver, since that was the case in the Muse3 test project (to get synth sound). So I have basic sound, using the Vam-O synth. Now I will try to get sound from my midi keyboard and midi tracks.
Great, so we are getting closer! :)
mdiemer wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 3:46 am P.S. So far not having any luck with midi keyboard. It's a basic midi keyboard controller, no sound of its own. It's plugged into the sound card, the 2496 via breakout cables. It works OK in Musescore, so it should work in Muse. I just can't see how to connect it up.
Let me show you my setup:

Ok, so I have installed jackd2, downloaded the QJackCtl AppImage and started it. I start Jack by pressing the Start button in QJackCtl. I have also started MusE4 and attached my small LPK25 midi keyboard (it is an USB keyboard, so not really the same as your setup).

Check out the image below:
1 and 2 are from QJackCtl. For some reason I have to connect my LPK25 to Midi Through.

3 and 4 are MusE after I have created a softsynth plugin track and a MIDI track. #4 appears after you click the small green IN arrow in #3.
muse_midi.jpg
muse_midi.jpg (92.48 KiB) Viewed 5925 times
I hope this is helpful! If not, check out this page from the wiki:
https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/ ... nd-running

and get back with any more questions! :) Or a success story! :)

MusE DAW running on Debian 11 Testing/XFCE4.
https://oscillator.se/musik

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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by spamatica »

oscillator wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 10:52 pm The tutorial is also at:
https://www.oscillator.se/opensource/#muse

(@spamatica do you have access to the wiki and can change the links? Or is @kybos still with us?)
Yes, I updated the page here now.
https://github.com/muse-sequencer/muse/ ... p-tutorial
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by oscillator »

@mdiemer: One more thing, in image #3, don't forget to "check" the small green circle on "Track1" to activate input.

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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

Yeah Baby, I finally got it! After a day of waiting for the power to go out due to the blizzard that has descended upon New England, I finally hit upon the right combination of mouse clicks. I now can make sound from my midi keyboard. One change I made was to replace the simple midi cable I was using with the Uno 1 midi cable. That seems to have helped. Or maybe it was just coincidence.

Anyway, all the various settings are diagrammed in the Jack "Connect" (I have an older version of Jack apparently, so the diagram is different than yours, oscillator. You get to it from "connect" rather than "graph"). And I did not start Jack, it's technically not running, but it shows the diagrams for Audio, Midi and Alsa with all the connections. I'm not sure what it all means, but it's working. I'm sure there will be glitches along the way but hopefully I'm off and running now.

Later, Osciallator (bet you never heard that one before...).
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

asbak wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 9:52 am The answers to your questions vary with what exactly your requirements are, and your requirements will vary depending on what answers you receive and you then come to realize what possibilities are available. That's the conundrum. :mrgreen:

If you want to use MIDI with Muse, what exactly does that mean? Do you want to be able to play a MIDI controller and hear sound in real time coming from a softsynth on your computer, running as a plugin in Muse or even as an external softsynth that Muse sends MIDI to?

Do you just want to record MIDI events in MUSE and you don't care about latency when hearing the audio, or you don't even mind not hearing the notes you are playing while recording MIDI?

Do you just want to step record MIDI events?

Do you mean you only manually (with a computer keyboard & mouse) program MIDI events into Muse and play those back through a softsynth?
Or do you plan to use Muse to only play back MIDI notes to an external Hardware Synth?

Would it bother you to give exclusive control over the audio system to Muse (as some Reaper users on their forums were apparently doing) while you are working with MIDI (whatever that means?) and do you not mind losing the ability to use a web browser for audio, or lose access to other audio subsystems while you are busy with Muse?

The answers to all these kinds of questions, and questions you may not have thought about before, determine what solution you're really after.

To put it another way, to know what kind of solution you're after you need to first have the exact requirements nailed down, and to know the exact requirements you'll have to clearly define what you're trying to achieve and what your exact workflow is.

I can't speak for others or users on the Reaper forum, but I use jack and can MIDI route from anywhere to anywhere and route audio (including pulseaudio sources) from anywhere to anywhere and have them all available at the same time, all the time at low (imperceptable) audio latency.

My system is flexible and can cater to most if not all usage requirements. It is flexible because it allows the use of Jack + Alsa + even Pulseaudio.

Setting this up is not trivial, however. It is true that the Linux audio landscape is a confused mess from the perspective of a new user who just wants to get on with making music.

That's why I suggested taking a look at Pipewire and reading up on it, because Pipewire will be the future of Linux Audio and should be a simpler way to get achievable results.

One could use many different approaches which are all valid, and many are definitely worth learning about, but if I were starting out today and just wanted to get up and running asap I'd nuke pulseaudio from my system, install Pipewire and take things from there.
Wow, there is so much to consider here, asbak. to answer the question, how do I intend to use this stuff: I just want to be able to input notes with my midi keyboard (also directly from within Muse as the case may be). and hear the notes as I do it. Yes I do use Step Record also. I also work a lot in the score view, selecting notes and applying things like Transposition, Length, Velocity etc. I want to be able to use at least entry-level libraries like Garrritan, and who knows maybe even better. If I can't get an absolutely finished product in Muse I can always go to Sonar, to add better instruments if need be.

I did check out Pipewire. that looks great, hopefully it will arrive in full form soon. It would solve a lot of problems, that's fro sure. But I decided for now to try and figure this out with the tools at hand, and the help being so graciously provided on this forum. Thank God for it!
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by oscillator »

mdiemer wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:56 pm Yeah Baby, I finally got it!
Great to hear! Now make and share some music! :) MusE is a great piece of software, for most kinds of music.

And when you have the time, I really recommend installing and running jackd2, as well as downloading the latest QJackCtl (available as an AppImage from my previous link). :)
mdiemer wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 10:56 pm Later, Osciallator (bet you never heard that one before...).
:D

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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by asbak »

mdiemer wrote: Sat Jan 29, 2022 11:03 pm
I just want to be able to input notes with my midi keyboard (also directly from within Muse as the case may be). and hear the notes as I do it. Yes I do use Step Record also. I also work a lot in the score view, selecting notes and applying things like Transposition, Length, Velocity etc. I want to be able to use at least entry-level libraries like Garrritan, and who knows maybe even better. If I can't get an absolutely finished product in Muse I can always go to Sonar, to add better instruments if need be.

I did check out Pipewire. that looks great, hopefully it will arrive in full form soon. It would solve a lot of problems, that's fro sure. But I decided for now to try and figure this out with the tools at hand, and the help being so graciously provided on this forum. Thank God for it!
In this case, where - if I understand correctly,

- you want to use a MIDI controller,
- get audio feedback while playing, presumably without latency
- you want to use orchestral libraries ( = sampler softsynth)
- you want to use the existing established solutions (ie not pipewire for now)
- etc

well ..... that sounds like you're aiming for
- the deluxe jack installation & setup,
- perhaps even with wine added to enable the use of Windows VSTs under Linux.
- Perhaps even with pulseaudio (consumer audio for web browsers etc) routed via jack when doing audio production, and the ability to switch back to pulseaudio only when not doing audio production. (That's what I do via a series of scripts launched when qjackctl starts and closes.)


Why this solution?

- Low latency operation with jack. What you play is what you hear, when you play it.
- Routing MIDI & Audio anywhere for playback and recording.
- Routing pulse consumer audio via soundsystem as well, in case you want to play and monitor a video via webbrowser or a player that uses the consumer audio (pulseaudio) subsystem.
- Windows VSTs (including Kontakt) may work (kinda sorta) in some cases - but be warned, this will never work as well as under Windows and may or may not work reliably.
- If it were me I'd rather use Linux native samplers like Linuxsampler + giga format samples. Alternatively, samplers like Highlife or Bliss support Akai AKP.


The challenge
- It's confusing and difficult to understand, set up and get working.
- There are MANY, MANY methods and solutions, some of which work well, some which don't, some of which are deprecated, many of which are poorly documented.
- Most of the major distros, as provided, are awful for audio production.
- The closest you're going to get to an "out of the box" solution that provides many of the tools for the job may be AV Linux.
- You can adapt and reconfigure any distribution to suit your purposes amd work well, but the tradeoff = your time, complexity and endless confusion with how it all works.
- Some people will claim that "Distro X performs better than Distro Y" but such claims are relative because most flavors of Linux can be re-jigged to work as well as the next distro because in Linuxland you have the source code and you can solve those problems yourself and compile code.
- However, some distros have way more development done using them & packages made available for them & have more bugs ironed out. From a convenience point of view those distros "may be better" for a typical end user.
- Some people will claim that exotic kernels are required to get good performance but this is not really the case.
To be clear, the standard Linux kernels are indeed awful for audio, and cannot be used unless you want to enjoy the benefits of poor audio performance.
On mainline distributions like Ubuntu and Mint, their optional low-latency kernel can be installed with a few key strokes and it works well with audio, and more importantly, with whatever else you may choose to be doing with your computer. In other words, you get good audio performance with them, they work well as all-rounders and don't introduce maintenance complexity and strange bugs and failures.
- For the ultimate, ultimate in audio performance, exotic kernels may indeed work "the best". The tradeoff manifests itself in potential unexpected system behaviour & crashes & maintenance complexity. For myself, the pitfalls outweigh any potential performance gains, performance gains which are insufficient compared to low-latency or PREEMPT kernels to justify messing around with for audio production.


It's a complex environment. All I can suggest is breaking things down into small units and solving each challenge one at a time, until it is working well, before moving on to solving the next problem.

Otherwise AV Linux may be your best bet to get started.

You'll need some kind of OK'ish Audio / Midi interface unless you already have one that works under Linux.
USB Class compliant interfaces should usually work but obviously do a search here to get tips on what has been tried and is known to work.
Alsa's webpages also have a (probably old) compatibility matrix of audio interfaces that were tested under Linux.

I have an old Edirol UA-25 and it works great w. Linux.
Old Emu 0404 PCI/e cards also work great but they're very tricky to set up. They won't work out of the box, need drivers compiled and mine exhibits weird behavior sometimes requiring modules to be reloaded and mixer settings to be re-applied before it works. I had to write an initialization startup script for mine to get it working.

Cheap & cheerful Behringers usually work out of the box, although the "pro audio community" (snobs & haters on other audio forums) hate them. :lol:
Otoh Behringer are one of the few mass manufacturers which support Linux, while many of the others attitudes vary somewhere between mild irritation to outright hostility toward Linux.

One could spend a lot more money and buy more expensive audio interfaces but imo the typical 2 in 2 out or 4 in 4 out soundcard going for double the price of a Behringer doesn't work or sound any better for the typical home user. Many folks buy Focusrites. Some of them work, some of them don't. They all cost way more money.

If one wanted to do audio for a live orchestra or band or in a studio connecting a ton of gear then one would have to consider more expensive and exotic solutions.

There you go, that's the best free advice you're going to get anywhere. :mrgreen:
Some Focal / 20.04 audio packages and resources https://midistudio.groups.io/g/linuxaudio
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Re: Need Help With Sound, Routing Etc.

Post by mdiemer »

Thanks for all that wonderful advice, askap. I'll take your word for it and install AV Linux. The computer I've been experimenting on is a 2009 Gateway dual core with 6GB ram and the 2496 ole standby card. But I also have a barebones i7, with 32GB ram, and a UR-22 interface. for just midi it works fine, and I had good luck last Spring experimenting with Reaper For Linux. I did use Wine and got Garritan Personal Orchestra going on the Aria Player, which also loads sfz files. I also got Kontakt Player going with Cinematic Strings, that also worked fine. I had other problems with Reaper, however, especially the micro-fonts they use. also I never figured out how to get Aria and KP actually inside Reaper. Only got them working in the standalone versions., But that was enough to convince me this could work.

So I plan to install AV Linux on the eighteen-wheeler, so to speak, where all my sound libraries already live on the D drive. that's the computer I have Sonar on. I keep it offline, not even connected to the net. That's because it still has windows 7. No way I would go near W10. and now with W11, people on the Cakewalk forum, which I left after receiving death threats because I dared criticize windows, are debating whether it's justifiable to buy a new laptop, because their 2 or 3 year old one won't work on W11. most of them will, of course, resulting in more junkyard trash and chemicals and floating plastic islands. all so Microsoft can continue its monopolistic ways.

And I will do my best to figure out the intricacies of Jack. that seems the wise thing to do as it will give me the most flexibility. Although I do midi, I do need decent latency so I can hear on playback what it is supposed to sound like. As for going windows-less in terms of plugins, for now I want to explore both possibilities. I do want to use Native Linux stuff as much as possible. I sometimes think I might want to get away from the orchestral stuff I normally do. It's very frustrating, all those screechy strings in the high register; the difficulty getting realistic woodwind and brass sound, etc. And then being limited by the ranges of the instruments, and knowing the weak parts in their registers etc. And orchestration...extremely hard, and very easy to produce mud and mush. But I'm a total novice when ot comes to synths. It will be interesting, perhaps even liberating. I have the Cakewalk Dimension Pro on that computer, and the Aria Player that comes with Garritan will load those sounds. It has a bunch of synths, so if I can get that going, that's probably where Ill start.
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