MXP4 promises 4D music file format

Davey Winder
Thursday, 11 September 2008 08:32

Business IT - Technology

A new digital music format promises to allow musicians to record potentially thousands of variations of the same song in a single file, playing back each arrangement based on rules decided by the artist or producer. Not forgetting the lyrics, artwork and photography which can all appear during playback...

A French company called Musinaut has launched a new interactive music file format going by the name of MXP4.

It claims that MXP4 will be a "breakthrough interactive digital multimedia audio file platform offering artists and music fans an enriched and dynamic music experience."

Which sounds like your typical marketing nonsense, more so when Musinaut starts talking about making the musical experience 4D.

But can the claims hold water? Let's see.

The 4D thing seems to revolve around the ability of the format to 'multiply' the listening experience by throwing in additional layers of expression, interactivity and multimedia content.

Using a special MXP4Creator software application, musicians are able to create a single file which contains as many different arrangements of the song as they want. Musinaut rather confusingly refers to these as skins.

Most bedroom bands would think of it as being a multi-track recorder. However, terminology apart, MXP4Creator lets the musician add different flavours to a song. Maybe a rock track could be done in a dub style, or a capella, or acoustic or all three.

The important point being that all the styles are available from within that single MXP4 file.

Musinaut says that this means "artists no longer have to decide on a final version, they can now lay down several versions depending on what the different band members prefer."

Indeed, producers using Logic, Cubase or Ableton can fairly easily include more than one bass-line, vocal or guitar track for example.

The idea being that each arrangement can be played back, using a special MXP4Player application, according to the preset rules decided upon by the artist or producer.

"This gives the finished work an extra fourth dimension" insists Musinaut.

What else can MXP4 offer, and can it really help struggling artists to raise their revenue? More on page 2...

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