[roann]

Originally Posted by mstaggerlee

I've recently downloaded the earliest Dispatch show posted on the llama (dispatch1996-04-16), in .shn format. A notice on the page this show was posted on stated that the files should not be converted to mp3, by request of the band.

I have a strong preference for .flac files over .shns (winamp's flac performance is far better than with .shns, and Nero will convert flacs to CDDA on the fly when/if you want to burn a disc), so after running the checksums (they all passed) I tried to convert the shns to flac format, using TLH v 2.6.0, build 168 (pretty sure this is the latest). Of the 19 files, only 2 generated error messages (child encoder process had non-zero exit status), but I only found 8 flac files in the folder after conversion!

Amazed, I repeated the conversion. Sure enough, several files simply vanish just as the next file is being written. Never one to give up easily, I decoded the .shns to .wav. This process seemed to go very smoothly. No error messages, and on testing all but 5 .wav files were all found to look like CDDA with 100% confidence, the remainder with 99%, and I noted no correlation between the 99%ers and the shns that wouldn't convert.

But anyway, now that the files are in .wav format, it should be a simple matter to simply convert them to .flac, right?

Well, not so much, as it turns out. All 19 files did indeed convert, but the 11 tracks that would not convert directly from shn to flac all produced an error message (file is truncated or otherwise corrupt). These 11 flacs seem to play just fine in winamp, but I still felt kinda hinky about them.

So, I tested them and all 11 produced the following error -
file is decodable without error, but flac fingerprint cannot be checked, since it was unset in the streaminfo block.

Also, if I attempt to decode these .flacs back to .wav, for the same 11 tracks I get the same error message, and those .wavs vanish just like the flacs did on direct conversion.

So ... any ideas about what's goin' on here?

I've downloaded the whole show for testing purposes. Unfortunately I have to confirm all the strange things you've described.

If you run TLH's Show audio files details function (see Analysis section) you get this:

length expanded size cdr WAVE problems fmt ratio filename
1:51.47 19690986 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.3994 dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.shn
9:35.05 101440826 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5647 dispatch1996-04-16d1t02.shn
6:05.62 64531018 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5640 dispatch1996-04-16d1t03.shn
8:46.22 92837512 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5500 dispatch1996-04-16d1t04.shn
8:40.55 91858472 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5111 dispatch1996-04-16d1t05.shn
7:27.25 78910668 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6009 dispatch1996-04-16d1t06.shn
1:51.37 19666510 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.4773 dispatch1996-04-16d1t07.shn
3:10.38 33605592 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.4569 dispatch1996-04-16d1t08.shn
7:29.32 79277808 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6277 dispatch1996-04-16d1t09.shn
6:03.66 64188354 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5758 dispatch1996-04-16d1t10.shn
8:31.59 90279770 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5509 dispatch1996-04-16d1t11.shn
7:12.21 76255022 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5602 dispatch1996-04-16d2t01.shn
7:04.13 74823176 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6008 dispatch1996-04-16d2t02.shn
5:38.47 59733722 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.6189 dispatch1996-04-16d2t03.shn
8:27.37 89521014 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.6070 dispatch1996-04-16d2t04.shn
3:45.36 39773544 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.5428 dispatch1996-04-16d2t05.shn
4:03.44 42967662 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.5694 dispatch1996-04-16d2t06.shn
5:01.07 53112964 B -b- -- ---xx shn 0.6205 dispatch1996-04-16d2t07.shn
0:05.15 917894 B -b- -- -a-xx shn 0.1982 dispatch1996-04-16d2t08.shn
110:51.66 1173392514 B 0.5679 (19 files)

For all files that cause trouble there is an a in the problems column. This is for audio data is not block-aligned.

The shorten decoder (not written by me) decodes those files without any error message - that's why TLH tells you that all files were decoded successfully. Note: if the audio data of the shn file is not block-aligned the audio data of the decoded wav file isn't block-aligned either.

If you encode to flac now (or shn > flac using Convert encoding format) the flac encoder gives you as encoding result, for example:

dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: 96% complete, ratio=0,385
dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: ERROR: got partial sample

So TLH is right when logging dispatch1996-04-16d1t01.wav: file is truncated or otherwise corrupt. TLH deletes such erroneous files per default. That's why the encoded/converted stuff vanishes into thin air.