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+--- Thread: Does everyone know how to make an .MSV audio file? (/thread-41665.html)
Does everyone know how to make an .MSV audio file? - Brebozio - 04-29-2023
Hi everyone, I have an issue that I can't still figure out how to resolve.
I have a PS2 game called "Habitrail Hamsterball", which is really... REALLY painful to play. It's a very simple game, but so difficult that me and my friends just thought to change the background music with some metal or DOOM ones to match with the difficult of the game (So we can play it and make it even more funny).
I have ripped the original disc, and I found into the STREAMS folder all the audios, made in .MSV file.
Long story short, the .MSV file format is an ADPCM audio file format used by Sony for her 2000s Audio Recorder, or to be more specific to convert the records made with her 2000 Audio Recorders.
I managed to open, play and convert them thanks to MFAudio, which identifies these audio files as .VAG PSX audio file (probably they're the same audio compression file format but named diffrently in order to distinguish the files for Playstation games and Audio Recorders).
Now, I searched on the Web until now without figuring out how to make the inverse process, i.e. make from an .MP3/.WAV file an .MSV audio file.
To be sincere, I tried to resolve this by making some .VAG file from .WAV using MFAudio and then just rename the extention, but after changing the files using Apache 1.1 (because just replacing it into the folder and make another ISO doesn't work on PCSX2), the game just doesn't work.
Searching online I found the old programs made by Sony to manage and play .MSV files, but all these programs just play or at most convert the Sony IC Audio Recorder files (.ICS) to .MSV, and don't do the viceversa. I tried to find something about .ICS audio files in order to make some compression-like audio and then just rename the extention in order to convert them finally into .MSV, but I coundn't find anything about it (I don't really know if this is a PCM, floating-point PCM or ADPCM... I don't even know if FFMPEG or Audacity are able to make a ICS-like compression).
I tried to understand if it was necessary to modify some database/index file into the game, but it's only a 70MB ISO and into it there are only a .WAD file with everything necessary to show on screen, the .IRX executives to play all the modules on the PS2 I/O controller, the audio streams and some video stream to be played when the game starts. Basically, it seems to need only to replace correctly the audio streams.
My final considerations are that the MFAudio conversions unexplicably are wrong for the game, so it doesn't start 'cause some error made by it. The only thing to do therefore is to find a way to genuinely convert the .WAV to .MSV. I can't find anyhing about it, I've only found a 2007 guide about how to change music tracks on Guitar Hero III for PS2 (which uses .MSV files), but all the linked tools seems to be unavailable.
And all of this brings me to ask your help: are you aware about some way to modify these .MSV files, which are .VAG twin extention files, confirmed also bay Notepad++, and/or how to correctly replace them into the game files? It would be very helpful if this community, which turned to be helpful for me in the past and turned to be very expert into ripping resources from games, would help me to make a simple, anonymus but painful-to-play game an authentic meme.
Thank you for the attention, I'll wait every suggestion here. Good day!
