Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › Just discovered Shorten Files (.shn) - Thoughts?
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Just discovered Shorten Files (.shn) - Thoughts?

post #1 of 13
9/19/07 at 2:56am
Thread Starter 
I just downloaded an audience recording of Gary Jules encoded into the lossless format known as Shorten. I'd never heard of it until now. How does this file format compare to say...FLAC or ALAC? I don't notice anything really different; same(ish) file sizes, same sound quality, etc. Thoughts?
Reply

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

post #2 of 13
9/19/07 at 2:58am
What program did you use to listen to it?
Reply
post #3 of 13
9/19/07 at 3:13am
Thread Starter 
Foobar has a plugin, as well as winamp. I'm using foobar.
Reply
post #4 of 13
9/19/07 at 7:18am
Shorten is old (maybe the oldest) free lossless format. It has been obsoleted by flac and rarely seen anymore.
Reply
post #5 of 13
9/19/07 at 7:23am
Shorten was popular when lossless audio was virtually unknown, but it is pretty obsolete now. It was most popular for trading live recordings. The compression ratios and software support is nowhere near as good as FLAC. The CPU demands on encoding and decoding are also pretty high. I believe there is no real support or updates on shorten anymore either.


I'm sure there's a bunch of other improvements FLAC has over shorten. In the end, FLAC still is the best lossless codec . Now only if Apple and WMP would officially support FLAC, it would be an industry standard overnight.
Reply
post #6 of 13
9/19/07 at 7:51am
Here is a comparison with FLAC and some other lossless codecs.
Reply
post #7 of 13
9/19/07 at 10:59am
Shorten is a old format. It is not very popular because its feature less, and have little to none software support.
The sound quality are the same on all lossless codecs (hence the name), but their compression rates/speeds vary depending on the encoders efficiency.

I suggest you read this:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index....ess_comparison
Reply
post #8 of 13
9/19/07 at 1:45pm
i have a few shorten files. an older lossless format.
Reply
post #9 of 13
9/19/07 at 9:15pm
I find a lot of shorten files and I usually decode them back to wav and then encode to flac for archiving and playback on my H140.
Reply
post #10 of 13
9/20/07 at 3:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by chelrob View Post
I find a lot of shorten files and I usually decode them back to wav and then encode to flac for archiving and playback on my H140.
Yes, thats the benefit with lossless codecs.
It don't matter if its compressed with an old and inferior codec, as you can always transcode to a different codec. Lossless of course...
Reply
post #11 of 13
9/20/07 at 5:57am
Quote:
Originally Posted by krmathis View Post
Yes, thats the benefit with lossless codecs.
It don't matter if its compressed with an old and inferior codec, as you can always transcode to a different codec. Lossless of course...

Yup, but tagging and gapless info gets lost in the mix (did shorten even have gapless anything?)
Reply
post #12 of 13
9/20/07 at 6:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Redo View Post
Yup, but tagging and gapless info gets lost in the mix (did shorten even have gapless anything?)
Depending on the software used, its fully possible to transfer tags to the new file.
I don't think Shorten had gapless playback anyway...
Reply
post #13 of 13
9/20/07 at 6:28am
shorten doesn't have tags... so not useful to me. also much worse compression.

just use foobar2000 to convert to FLAC
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Computer Audio

Head-Fi's Best Sellers

Head-Fi.org › Forums › Equipment Forums › Computer Audio › Just discovered Shorten Files (.shn) - Thoughts?