Shorten

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Shorten (SHN) is a digital method for lossless audio data compression .

Shorten is a format for the space-saving archiving of PCM - Wave files with 44.1 kHz 16-bit stereo with low complexity and is therefore fast and needs little memory . Shorten files use the filename extension .shn.

The format is technically out of date. Newer audio codecs ( FLAC , Monkey's Audio ("APE"), True Audio , WavPack ) offer extended functionalities: They compress more effectively, exceed shorten in speed, are more flexible, are available on noteworthy platforms, offer a freer / clearer licensing situation continuously developed and offer support for metadata , replay gain .

history

The Shorten algorithm and its reference implementation were originally developed by Tony Robinson in 1992/1993, first at Cambridge University and later at SoftSound Ltd. The last version he published was version 2.3a. The source code was made available under a generous non-commercial license.

There are many free versions and also further developments to incorporate search information for a quick jump to any playback position, so-called seek tables , or to enclose it in a separate file in order to quickly (re) jump to any position within a File without completely decoding all previous data.

Since there was no alternative at the time as a free format, it quickly achieved high popularity. Although the method is no longer up to date and has numerous weaknesses, Shorten remains a popular format, mainly because it is established as a lossless compression method in bootleg exchange communities like etree and many concert recordings are encoded in this format. The cross-platform availability and the large number of experienced users are appreciated. But here, too, there is now a switch to more modern formats.

See also

  • TIFF in the graphics area

Web links