MUS File Extension

What is the .MUS file type?

The primary association of the .mus extension belongs to the Finale Music Score Notation (MUS) file type and format. Finale is a full-featured commercial music composer's studio developed by MakeMusic and aimed at classical score writing. MUS is the default format used by Finale and other MakeMusic applications.

A .mus file is a musical composition written as a musical score. MUS files also contain generated MIDI sequences that correspond to the stave notation and can be played back in real time to aid the composer.

Aside from professional music composing, MUS files can be viewed and edited with Finale NotePad (not to be confused with the MS Windows simple text editor) and Finale iPad SongBook (both are free applications). With a virtual PDF printer, Finale music scores made as .mus files can be shared as PDF files.

With Minecraft—a popular sandbox-type construction single- and multiplayer online game by Mojang, based on the use of square ('box') shapes—the .mus extension is assigned to in-game music files. Such .mus files contain OGG-encoded audio data. Minecraft .mus files can be decoded and encoded with the use of several converter utilities available for that purpose (e.g., muscode).

In association with the Infinity playlist (.mus) file type, the .mus extension is assigned to small plaintext files that control music sequences in games based upon the BioWare Infinity game engine (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, etc.). A .mus file defines a sequence of .asm files with the actual audio data to be conditionally played during gameplay.

Besides, the .mus extension is also typically assigned to music files in various computer games released by Electronic Arts (mainly, the Need For Speed, NFS racing game family). MUS files contain in-game music and soundtracks, played according to the course of gameplay. Audio data from NFS .mus files can be extracted with special converters like NFSMW Music Extractor.

Lastly, the .mus extension was used to identify MIDI music files in the cult computer game Doom by ID Software as well as its clones (Doom II, Heretic and others). The format of .mus files in Doom was based upon MIDI, although simplified and compacted for smaller file sizes. Old Doom music tracks can still be directly played by some media players.

Software to open or convert MUS files

Finale NotePad by MakeMusic

 

Finale by MakeMusic

 

Finale PrintMusic by MakeMusic

 

Finale for Windows

 

MusicBee by Steven Mayall

 

Free File Viewer Pro

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