Shn

Shn commonly refers to the Shorten lossless audio compression format, identified by the file extension .shn. Shorten was developed in the 1990s for preserving the exact original audio from CD rips while reducing file size compared to uncompressed PCM data. It is considered an early example of lossless audio compression and was used by various archival and music-collection communities.

As a format, SHN aimed to provide reliable bit-for-bit reconstruction of the source audio, along with support for metadata and basic tagging within the file headers. Encoding and decoding were performed by dedicated SHN tools, and utilities such as shntool were used to manipulate Shorten archives. The ecosystem included both reference implementations and third-party software to convert SHN files to other formats or to extract tracks from archived collections.

SHN’s popularity declined as other lossless formats gained traction. FLAC, WavPack, and other modern codecs offered broader hardware support, more robust tools, and easier integration with contemporary music libraries and streaming workflows. Consequently, SHN archives are now largely found in older collections or niche archival contexts. Some legacy players and converters still provide limited support for reading SHN files or converting them to more current formats, but SHN is no longer a mainstream choice for new releases.

See also: FLAC, WAV, lossless audio formats, audio compression, shntool.

Note: In some contexts, “Shn” may be used as a shorthand or acronym for other terms, but this article focuses on the Shorten lossless audio format commonly denoted by .shn.