what's SHN

[headgear]

can someone explain to me what SHN is? if you could do somelike an idiot's guide to SHN that would be lovely.

thank you.

[matt the fiddler]

it is pretty much a loss less compression [similiar to mp3s, but they delete some of the frequency] so the files arn't quite as small- but definatly perfect quality...
one catch [adn also a big positive] peopel generall only want a shn to be made from the master disc- so pretty much by the person who made the recording.. this ensure that the file has not been corupted by bad burners, mp3 format, etc. and keeps the integrity of the sound in trading. so only ethical way to make a new shn is to do it form a tape that your recorded... you can trade and ba dnp for them jsut liek normals cds with the wav. format.. [standard cd reading format]

[headgear]

hey thanks for that matt. still a bit unclear about something though, so take this hypothetical situation...

someone has sent me four disks, each disk has two folders (a concert in each) and they are all SHN files. what do i need to download to play them and where would i get it from?

cheers

[aaronsawyer]

there is a shn plug in for winamp availabe from etree.org...but i think that site is going through some server trouble but you can get the plug in from a website called www.furthurnet.com available in the links section, just download it and it will install itself, once installed just load the shn files onto your winamp playlist and enjoy...also if you are in bootlegs by other bands check out what furthur net has to offer...it's basically a napster for bootlegs...it's all legal too!

Aaron

by the way...does anyone know the easiest way to convert shn to wav to put on a normal audio cd?

[mandoBob]

the download here should do the trick...
http://www.etree.org/mkw.html

[gbs3769]

Just to clear a few things up for you in case you still weren't sure as to the whole deal with the SHN files.

A SHN file is basically a compressed WAV file. The very nice thing about Shorten (SHN) compression is that it is a lossless compression. MP3 compression on the other hand is a lossy compression and a lot of the sound quality is lost. This makes the shorten compression a very good compression for people who trade shows.

The way that SHN files work is that there is a MD5 file that comes with the SHN files. This MD5 file is a checksum file that can be used to ensure that the SHN files you have are the complete and correct files. The way that this works is you have to download an application that will run the MD5 file against the SHN files. A good program to do this is the MKW toolset that a link was posted to before.

Once you have verified the files then you can convert them to wav to be burned onto a CD. The thing with this is that you want to be careful when you convert the files. Once you convert the files to WAV files you should not convert them back to SHN because this degrades the quality of the files and the SHN files won't match up with the MD5 files.

- Matt