ALF2 CD is a very obscure format created by developers Lev Bannov and Aleksei Myasnikov at Russian company NCT Soft in the early 2000s.

It is implemented as an ACM codec, therefore all encoded files are wrapped in a WAV container. That way, any standard player using ACM (such as Winamp and Windows Media Player) can play ALF2 streams, as long as the codec is installed on that system.

Besides the ACM codec, it was distributed with its own CD ripper and GUI encoder. Only high bitrates are available, from 256 to 512kbps.

It never met much success, and was hosted on the developers' web page for only one or two years. You can still find a mirror of it at the Internet Archive though.

The multimedia programmer Konstantin Shishkov (Kostya) did some analysis on how ALF2CD works.

Big thanks to Zachary Jelesoff for introducing me to ALF2 CD and contributing the programs below.


Date: 2001-11-09
Version: 2.30
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: ALF2CD-230.exe - 1.424kB

Date: 2001-02-28
Version: 2.01
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: ALF2CD-201.exe - 1.131kB