SHN vs TTA
A detailed comparison of Shorten Audio and True Audio Lossless — file size, quality, compatibility, and which format to choose for your workflow.
Shorten Audio
Audio FilesShorten (SHN) is one of the earliest lossless audio compression formats, developed by Tony Robinson. It was widely used in the live music trading community for sharing concert recordings before FLAC became the dominant lossless format.
About SHN filesTrue Audio Lossless
Audio FilesTTA (True Audio) is an open-source lossless audio codec that provides real-time lossless compression with hardware-friendly decoding. It achieves compression ratios similar to FLAC while maintaining very low CPU requirements during playback.
About TTA filesStrengths Comparison
SHN Strengths
- Lossless.
- Historical artifact of 1990s music trading.
- Modern decoder availability.
TTA Strengths
- Lossless bit-exact reproduction.
- Fast, low-memory decoding.
- Open-source reference.
- Cue-sheet support.
Limitations
SHN Limitations
- Historically royalty-encumbered.
- Obsolete for new recordings.
- FLAC offers better compression.
TTA Limitations
- Compression ratio worse than FLAC.
- Niche tooling.
- Hardware support died with 2000s DAP era.
- Eclipsed by FLAC.
Technical Specifications
| Specification | SHN | TTA |
|---|---|---|
| MIME type | audio/x-shorten | audio/x-tta |
| Extension | .shn | .tta |
| Algorithm | Linear prediction + Rice coding | Fixed prediction + adaptive Rice coding |
| Successor | FLAC | — |
| License | — | LGPL |
Typical File Sizes
SHN
- Full concert recording 300-500 MB
TTA
- 3-min song (CD) 20-25 MB
- Full CD album 250-350 MB
Ready to convert?
Convert between SHN and TTA online, free, and without installing anything. Encrypted upload, automatic deletion after 2 hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
SHN (Shorten Audio) is an audio file format used to store sound recordings — music, voice, podcasts, sound effects. The format defines how the audio samples are compressed (or stored raw), what bitrates are supported, and how metadata such as title, artist, album, and cover art is embedded. It is part of the audio files family.
TTA (True Audio Lossless) is an audio file format used to store sound recordings — music, voice, podcasts, sound effects. The format defines how the audio samples are compressed (or stored raw), what bitrates are supported, and how metadata such as title, artist, album, and cover art is embedded. It is part of the audio files family.
VLC, foobar2000, and the default media players on Windows and macOS handle SHN natively. On mobile, iOS Music and Android media apps vary in their support — popular formats work everywhere; niche ones may need a dedicated app. If playback fails on a device, converting to MP3 or AAC usually solves it.
VLC, foobar2000, and the default media players on Windows and macOS handle TTA natively. On mobile, iOS Music and Android media apps vary in their support — popular formats work everywhere; niche ones may need a dedicated app. If playback fails on a device, converting to MP3 or AAC usually solves it.
Upload the SHN to KaijuConverter and pick MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, or any other target. Our FFmpeg pipeline decodes the audio and re-encodes to the target format at sensible default bitrates (VBR ~190 kbps for music, 96 kbps for speech). Metadata and cover art travel with the audio where both formats support them.
SHN can be lossy or lossless depending on the specific variant. Lossy variants (smaller files) discard some audio detail during compression in ways tuned to be inaudible; lossless variants preserve every sample exactly but produce larger files. For distribution, lossy at high bitrate is standard; for archival, lossless wins.