PVF is a special low-bandwidth ADPCM-based digital audio format for recording and storing human speech. A .pvf file contains digitally recorded speech in the PVF format. Such .pvf files were mainly used with legacy voice modems and software-based answering machines. Often, to be used with a specific modem, a .pvf file would have to be converted into the device-specific RMD format. Currently, PVF audio files can still be played with several major media players as well as converted into other formats (like WAV) with multi-format converter tools.

This format is free, which apparently is one of the reasons for its popularity. The used codecs supports variable bit rates (as a default), and .ogg files usually play back easily on all platforms. All things being equal, the sound quality exceeds that of mp3 somewhat.