Burning Lossless Files to CD-A; Why the f@$k do SHNs take so damn long?

[rabble]

I've looked and looked, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why it takes so much longer to burn SHN files as opposed to FLAC - Like, DRASTICALLY longer (5 min. FLACs vs. 30 min. SHN)

It's to the point that I don't enjoy alot of SHN shows that I've downloaded because I don't want to sit around all morning waiting for the damn thing to burn off!

For the record, I'm running WinXP SP2, Nero w/ SHN & FLAC plugins for burning..

[iamhydrogen]

yeah, that shn plug in for nero sucks. just extract the shns to wavs and burn them. it is a hell of alot quicker. that's what i do. :)

[iamhydrogen]

oh, by the way if you are using mkwact to extract the shns make sure to go to the options and turn of "delete input files after processing" so as to not alter the original file set.

[rabble]

Wouldn't decoding take just as long? I ask these being completely uneducated about it, the extent of my encoding experience was mp3 > cda back in the days when none of the burning software out there supported on the fly conversion.....

[New Homebrew]

http://www.picrack.com/001/other(3)/Untitled-1.jpg

[rabble]

Seriously, wouldn't just THIS be enough to convince the SHN folks that their closed source format is dead? I'd take FLAC over SHN any day of the week - moreover, if I had the time and knowledge, I'd spend my days converting every SHN set I have to FLAC and redistributing..!

[tgc225]

The SHN format actually decodes faster than FLAC in most tests:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html

[rabble]

Decode as in SHN > WAV? Sure, but there will never be any sort of situation where I would want to convert ANY file to WAV - I'm only intersted in > CD-A conversion (which I suppose, is just a WAV, but if that's the case, I still don't get why it takes longer to do SHN > CD-A vs. FLAC > CD-A, if SHN is supposed to be faster...

[dorrcoq]

Seriously, wouldn't just THIS be enough to convince the SHN folks that their closed source format is dead? I'd take FLAC over SHN any day of the week - moreover, if I had the time and knowledge, I'd spend my days converting every SHN set I have to FLAC and redistributing..!

Read Five's foobar2000 tutorial - it is simple to convert from SHN to FLAC. Not necessarily a speedy conversion, but really easy to do.

[pmonk]

Why not use shntool - Doesn't seem like a long process to me???

[geordy]

Decode as in SHN > WAV? Sure, but there will never be any sort of situation where I would want to convert ANY file to WAV - I'm only intersted in > CD-A conversion (which I suppose, is just a WAV, but if that's the case, I still don't get why it takes longer to do SHN > CD-A vs. FLAC > CD-A, if SHN is supposed to be faster...

Your problem is that you're letting Nero do the converting while trying to burn the cd. It's trying to do two processor intensive jobs at the same time. To save yourself some time, use an external program to convert shn>wav, then burn the wav files to CD-A. After you burn the cd, delete the wav files and keep the shn files to make future CD-A's from.

SHN>WAV is slightly faster than FLAC>WAV, using programs other than Nero to do the conversions. My computer has lots of trouble doing SHN > CD-A or FLAC > CD-A, so I just don't do it. If you're sick of shn files, just convert SHN>WAV>FLAC.

[rabble]

Your problem is that you're letting Nero do the converting while trying to burn the cd. It's trying to do two processor intensive jobs at the same time. To save yourself some time, use an external program to convert shn>wav, then burn the wav files to CD-A. After you burn the cd, delete the wav files and keep the shn files to make future CD-A's from.

SHN>WAV is slightly faster than FLAC>WAV, using programs other than Nero to do the conversions. My computer has lots of trouble doing SHN > CD-A or FLAC > CD-A, so I just don't do it. If you're sick of shn files, just convert SHN>WAV>FLAC.

What would you folks suggest for a good SHN > WAV conversion app?

[pmonk]

I will say it again - shntool works fine in my book!

[TheMamba]

http://www.picrack.com/001/other(3)/Untitled-1.jpg


:roflol: :roflol: That was fucking great!

[spiritinaphoto]

What would you folks suggest for a good SHN > WAV conversion app?
etree scripts

They're command line, but it's a simple matter of pointing the command at the folder containing your shows. On my system, the command would look something like the following:

unshn /home/sarah/Music/lossless_shows/nameofshowfolder

However, the 'flacify' command is even sweeter--takes any lossless format you have decoders on your system for, and spits out sector-boundary aligned flac files.

I love the etree scripts because they don't require navigating into the actual directory, so they take one less command than using shntool or a conventional command line encoder.

[Five]

I like using the Monkey's Audio frontend to decompress SHN... foobar2000 also works great.

[uhclem]

What would you folks suggest for a good SHN > WAV conversion app?
I use Multi-frontend and the shorten.exe binary. See my sig for links.

[jcrab66]

What would you folks suggest for a good SHN > WAV conversion app?


I recommend Traders Little Helper...

[pmonk]

I use Multi-frontend and the shorten.exe binary. See my sig for links.

When using shorten to compress/decompress - do you just use the -x option ??

[ssamadhi97]

To burn audio cds from shn files, I highlight a bunch of shns in my foobar playlist, right-click, hit "Write Audio CD...", and *poof* done. :D

[iamhydrogen]

To burn audio cds from shn files, I highlight a bunch of shns in my foobar playlist, right-click, hit "Write Audio CD...", and *poof* done. :D

as a foobar noob, you just made my freakin day, thank you. :)

[uhclem]

When using shorten to compress/decompress - do you just use the -x option ??
Use the -x option to decompress.

Use no options to compress (not that you would want to do this).

[pmonk]

Use the -x option to decompress.

Use no options to compress (not that you would want to do this).

Ha :lol Man when I first got into all of this flac was the new kid on the block - boy has things changed!

[rabble]

To burn audio cds from shn files, I highlight a bunch of shns in my foobar playlist, right-click, hit "Write Audio CD...", and *poof* done. :D

Two quick questions:

Does this do SHN > WAV > CD-A, or just SHN > CD-A?

Does foobar allow DAO/gapless burning?

[CitizenGatsby]

as a foobar noob, you just made my freakin day, thank you. :)
Me too. Woo-hoo! :D

[iamhydrogen]

Two quick questions:

Does this do SHN > WAV > CD-A, or just SHN > CD-A?

Does foobar allow DAO/gapless burning?

Q: Does this do SHN > WAV > CD-A, or just SHN > CD-A?
A: I assume that it does SHN > WAV > CD-A because it "prepares" the files first, which i think means decompressing them.

Q: Does foobar allow DAO/gapless burning?
A: It didn't give me the option so i checked out the disc after and it was DAO

and thirdly, EVERYBODY GET FOOBAR NOW! :D :wave:

[rabble]

So, foobar seems to be quite the swiss army knife of apps - Do ya'll use it as your primary audio player as well?

Anywhere I can get a good tutorial on it? I remember trying to use it once, but I just found the UI so clunky that it didn't last long...

[TheMamba]

Look in the Technobabble Archive and the FAQ - there's plenty of articles on Foobar's features in those areas.

[rabble]

Look in the Technobabble Archive and the FAQ - there's plenty of articles on Foobar's features in those areas.

Already found the tutorials, but I'm asking what people's experiences are using it as an everyday player are - Anyone out there with an opinion one way or the other?

[pmonk]

I started off using winamp but got turned onto to foobar and foobar is all I use now. I never had any problems with foob playing, tagging or converting files.

[Five]

I still use Winamp most times for aesthetic reasons and the fact that I also use it as a video player. I use foobar2000 mostly as a conversion/tagging utility.

[ssamadhi97]

Two quick questions:

Does this do SHN > WAV > CD-A, or just SHN > CD-A?
Like iamhydrogen said, it decompresses the files first - more precisely, it creates a Nero image file from them, which is burned afterwards. This is to avoid running into problems with file formats that cannot be decoded quickly enough for burning on the fly (think La or OptimFrog; maybe less complex formats on outdated computers too)

(oh and for the record, the result is the same no matter whether you burn with a temporary wav/image file or not, the only difference is that with the temporary file you need enough harddisk space to accommodate the entire show in decoded form)
Does foobar allow DAO/gapless burning?
Yes, in fact it exclusively burns cds as DAO/gapless

[rabble]

(oh and for the record, the result is the same no matter whether you burn with a temporary wav/image file or not, the only difference is that with the temporary file you need enough harddisk space to accommodate the entire show in decoded form)


If that's the only difference, then I don't care about using Foobar - Though from what other people here have said, using Foobar to SHN > WAV > CD-A goes much more quickly than using Nero to decode on the fly (SHN > CD-A)

[rabble]

Also, one more quick question - I'm installing FB2K right now, getting ready to follow Five's tutorial on conversion - Is it ok to run the conversion while other system intensive apps are running (ie, Azureus), or is it one of those processes that can't have it's process thread interrupted or it will create errors?

[Five]

it's okay to do a conversion with other stuff running, I've done this many times without any errors whatsoever. After the conversion, just do a bit compare (or SHNtool cmp or generate .st5s for both sets and compare, what have you).

[rabble]

it's okay to do a conversion with other stuff running, I've done this many times without any errors whatsoever. After the conversion, just do a bit compare (or SHNtool cmp or generate .st5s for both sets and compare, what have you).


Wow, worked absolutely flawlessly! Thanks for writing such a complete guide there, Five - All FLAC from here on out..!

Be afraid SHNs.... Be very afraid.