Sony’s IC Recorders have been a popular small digital voice recorder for many consumers. The current models all use common recording formats like Linear PCM WAVE files or MP3, but it wasn’t always so. One of the first models ICD-R100 would record to the ICS audio format, which was Sony’s original sound formats used on the IC Recorders. I am still looking for samples of this format. If you do have a need to convert this format, Sony has free converter software.
The next generation of IC Recorders used a Memory Stick and therefore recorded audio to the MSV (Memory Stick Voice) format. There were actually two different types of MSV files, the first used the ADPCM codec and the next used the LPEC codec. Later IC Recorders would record to the DVF (Digital Voice Format) which also had a couple versions, one using the LPEC codec and the other the older TRC codec.
AFAIK, none of the codecs used in these file formats has been made public and these formats are not readable by tools such as MediaInfo. The only way to know details of a file and have the ability to play or convert is to use Sony software which has been discontinued and the replacement, Sound Organizer, can only recognize the LPEC codec versions of MSV and DVF. There is also a plugin for Windows Media Player available here, which is required even for Switch to work.
PRONOM currently has one signature for the LPEC versions of MSV and DVF, so lets look closer at the formats and see if we can determine what they are from the header.
The CODECs
ADPCM is an abbreviation for “Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation“. Appears to only have been used with the ICD-MS1 and possibly MS2 digital recorders.
TRC may be an abbreviation of Truespeech’s “Triple Rate CODER” or “Triple Rate Codec“, but not much info exists.
LPEC is a proprietary compression format. It is an abbreviation of “Long-term Predicated Excitation Coding“. It even had its own trademarked logo which was cancelled in 2015.
The Software
The first IC Recorders came with PCLINK software, then came with the “MemoryStick Voice Editor” software. List of compatible formats.
Digital Voice Editor came next. It could read and convert everything except “ICS” files. Click here to download the last version. Version 1 compatible formats. Version 2 compatible formats. Version 3 Compatible Formats. The software was officially retired in 2016.
The current software for managing audio files from IC Recorder is Sound Organizer. The software does open and convert some MSV/DVF files as long as they use the LPEC codec. Sound Organizer Compatible formats.
Also note, Sony made one ICD-CX series recorder which could also capture photos. It requires the Visual & Voice Player software. Audio is recorded in the DVF format.
Test Data Set
In order to explore the different formats I first needed to gather some samples. There are a few out there, but with the Digital Voice Editor 3 software, I was able to take a sample file and convert it to the many options available. You can see in the screenshot below, the different samples, their extension and the codec used. You can find my samples in GitHub here.
All MSV and DVF file have a similar pattern. The first 32 bytes have the text string “MS_VOICE SONY CORPORATION”. In between MS_VOICE and SONY, there is 4 bytes which vary slightly between the different formats. Here is a table of samples and the 4 bytes so we can see the differences.
| Model | CODEC | EXTENSION | Hex Values |
|---|---|---|---|
| ICD-Px0 | TRC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-Px8 | TRC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-Px7 | TRC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-SXxx0 | LPEC | MSV | 01030000 |
| ICD-SXx8 | LPEC | MSV | 01030000 |
| ICD-SXx7 | LPEC | MSV | 01030000 |
| ICD-SXx6 | LPEC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-SXx5 | LPEC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-SXx0 | LPEC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-MX | LPEC | MSV | 01020000 |
| ICD-BM | LPEC | MSV | 01020000 |
| ICD-ST | LPEC | DVF | 01020000 |
| ICD-MS5xx | LPEC | MSV | 01010000 |
| ICD-S | LPEC | MSV | 01010000 |
| ICD-BPx50 | LPEC | DVF | 01010000 |
| ICD-BP100/x20 | LPEC | DVF | 01010000 |
| ICD-MS1/MS2 | ADPCM | MSV | 01000000 |
| ICD-R100/R200 | Unknown | ICS |
There is an obvious pattern to the hex values as they increment 0100, 0101, 0102, and 0103. But there is some overlap between extension and codec, so probably more of a version number than specific to the codec. Currently the PRONOM signature for this format fmt/472, has the pattern for the 0102 version, but none of the others. We could simply add a variable in the signature for the different values and update the PRONOM signature so more samples would be identified. This would work well if there was a secondary characterization process to get technical metadata such as the codec and quality, but I am unaware of any tool to gather this information from the format, so I wonder if we can find any hints in the file to identify the codec so we have multiple PRONOM signatures to choose from. Also, you can see from the screenshot above that some of the LPEC formats have specific model numbers in the codec column, which could mean they may not be exactly the same. Each IC Recorder model has different quality settings and it appears, some settings may not be compatible with other models.
Looking beyond the first 16 bytes there is a lot of hex values which are unknown. A close comparison of all the samples leads me to the 4 bytes at offset 60. They seem to be the same for files with the same settings. Below is a chart of those values.
| Extension | CODEC | Quality | Offset 60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DVF | TRC | HQ | 00300001 |
| DVF | TRC | SP | 00350001 |
| DVF | TRC | LP | 00370001 |
| DVF | LPEC (ICD-BP-100/x20) | SP | 00150001 |
| DVF | LPEC (ICD-BP-100/x20) | LP | 00190001 |
| DVF | LPEC | SP | 002A0001 |
| DVF | LPEC | LP | 002C0001 |
| MSV | LPEC (ICD-BM/MX/SXx7/SXx8/SXxx0) | SP | 004A0001 |
| MSV | LPEC (ICD-BM/MX/SXx7/SXx8/SXxx0) | LP | 004C0001 |
| MSV/DVF | LPEC (ICD-SXx7/SXx8/SXxx0) | STHQ | 00200002 |
| MSV/DVF | LPEC (ICD-SXx7/SXx8/SXxx0) | ST | 00240002 |
| MSV | ADPCM | SP | 00050001 |
| MSV | ADPCM | LP | 00090001 |
Just to be sure this value at offset 60 was indeed an indication of codec and quality I manually switch out the 4 bytes from a LPEC ST file for a TRC HQ file. Sure enough, the software now saw the file as a TRC HQ audio file, even though the original is a Stereo file.
There is a very good chance this is not all the options. I only have one physical recorder which only records in Mono. But this gives us a really good idea of how to tell the difference between files. Below are the patterns I am submitting to PRONOM.
MSV ADPCM
4D535F564F494345{4}01000000534F4E5920434F52504F524154494F4E{28}00(05|09)0001
DVF TRC
4D535F564F494345{4}01020000534F4E5920434F52504F524154494F4E{28}00(30|35|37)0001
MSV/DVF LPEC
4D535F564F494345{4}01(01|02|03)0000534F4E5920434F52504F524154494F4E{28}00(15|19|20|24|2A|2C|4A|4C)00(01|02)
Perhaps we can alter the existing PRONOM signature for fmt/472 to catch all we may miss to:
4D535F564F494345{8}534F4E5920434F52504F524154494F4E6D73766C637374772E73706900000000
This is one example of a file format which has a proprietary component which was never released from the vendor. When the vendor stopped supporting the software to open and read these formats, the risk increased for long-term preservation. It would be really nice when a vendor discontinues a technology, which was used by consumers, they would make the documentation for the format openly available. If you know more about the format, please reach out or if you have samples which don’t match the patterns mentioned here.
This was very interesting. Audio formats I have not played with before. Thank you for sharing!