MT9: remove the parts of songs that you don't want to hear

The 'Music 2.0' era is here, and guitarists, singers, DJs and producers all stand to benefit

The MusicRadar Team, Fri 23 May 2008, 10:33 am UTC

The Music 2.0 player (bottom left) features six individual audio channels.

Ever listened to a track and wanted to remove one or more of the parts? Maybe you’re a guitar player who fancies jamming along with an arrangement that doesn’t feature any riffery, a singer who just needs a Karaoke-style backing track, or a remixer who wants an a cappella vocal? If so, you’ll be interested in the MT9 file format (also known as ‘Music 2.0’) which its creators say will challenge the dominance of MP3.

According to a report in The Korea Times, MT9 files can be loaded into a special player that features a six-channel audio equalizer (though it looks more like a mixer to us). Each of these channels corresponds to a different part of the arrangement (drums, bass, vocals, guitar etc) and level faders enable you to turn things up or down.

Apparently, a company called Audizen is already selling some MT9-format albums, while Samsung and LG are reported to be interested in equipping their phones with MT9 players next year.

So, can this possibly work? MusicRadar isn’t currently in possession of the full technical details, but it seems that MT9 files have to be encoded from the original masters (there’s no way of separating a stereo file, after all). This being the case, you shouldn’t expect to be able to convert your record collection into the new format on your home computer.

It’s an interesting concept, though – we’ll be monitoring the progress of MT9 closely. In order for it to succeed, it’ll have to get the backing of both the record industry and the companies that produce our digital music players, but at the moment, we don’t know whether this will be forthcoming.

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User comments (6)

oliverdavy

Thu 29 May 2008, 12:18 pm UTC

This is exactly what we DON'T need. In an era when people view music as a completely free (and hence valueless) resource, and when they see it as their right to rip off all concerned by downloading all the music they want for nothing, do we really want to remove the last bit of control the musician has over their music?
This whole idea is completely inane and will reduce the perceived value of recorded music in the minds of many listeners who think they can do better than the original artist / engineer / producer. Bad bad bad.

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BenRogerson

Tue 27 May 2008, 12:04 pm UTC

I don't think this will replace MP3 either, to be honest - that's just what the developers are saying. It'll certainly be interesting to see how much support it gets, though.

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stian41

Tue 27 May 2008, 8:29 am UTC

This seems like a really good product. But i agree that i won't replace MP3, because it obviously will take up a lot of memory! But seems interesting =)

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Whispering_Wind

Mon 26 May 2008, 7:00 pm UTC

seems good but i doubt it will take over MP3's because it'll most likely be just musicians who'll take advantage of this

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anartistiam

Mon 26 May 2008, 4:54 pm UTC

Interesting sh*t.
Hailing from Europe, there's the iKlax audio format which is multitrack and seems easier to use than MT9.
I was able to download the software to create my own tracks and it works pretty well. You actually get quite excited once playing multitrack, it seems we may just change our listening habits.
Just go to http://www.iklax.com

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antonioctd

Sat 24 May 2008, 12:06 pm UTC

Nice... But it isn't a replace for MP3... MP3 is a (very) low quality but very easy way of storing/sharing music because of file sises.
MT9 seems to be a 12 channel file (6 stereo tracks) so even if it's compressed the files will be way larger that MP3

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