Shorten (SHN) is a

file format A file format is a Computer standard, standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary format, pr ...

used for compressing audio data. It is a form of

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressi ...

of files and is used to losslessly compress CD-quality audio files (44.1 kHz 16- bit stereo

PCM Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to Digital signal (signal processing), digitally represent analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio application ...

). Shorten is no longer developed and other lossless audio codecs such as

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

Monkey's Audio Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis ...

(APE), TTA, and

WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. ...

(WV) have become more popular. It is still in use to trade concert recordings that are already encoded as Shorten files. Shorten files use the .shn file extension.

Handling Shorten files

All libavcodec based players and converters support the Shorten codec; and since the LAVFilters are based on libavcodec, support can easily be added to Windows Media Player and other software that uses the standard filter / codec APIs. As far as less common programs, some Rockbox applications can play Shorten files without decompression, and third-party Shorten plug-ins exist for

Nero Burning ROM Nero Burning ROM, commonly called Nero, is an optical disc authoring program from Nero AG. The software is part of the Nero Multimedia Suite but is also available as a stand-alone product. It is used for burning and copying optical media such ...

, Foobar2000, and

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...

supports Shorten files natively, and ffplay from the ffmpeg package can be used if a command line utility is desired.

References

External links

Shorten Research Paper
written by the author of Shorten and detailing how it works.
Trader's Little Helper Download page
Trader's Little helper converts shn to wav among other things
etree.org Wiki article

etree.org
is a trading site for authorized recordings of live performances; etree formerly used Shorten exclusively but is increasingly using

.
Shorten FAQ
(note: If looking for software to play .shn files, you will probably be better served by th
etree software page
as the Shorten FAQ has many broken and outdated links.)

a performance comparison of lossless audio formats, including Shorten.

Includes a decent list of programs to handle Shorten files.
SHN Format Conversion
an online tool for converting SHN files to other formats. {{Compression formats Lossless audio codecs Cross-platform software

Handling Shorten files

See also

References

External links