Shorten (.shn) is an audio compression scheme that is used to compress audio (.wav) files losslessly. This means that after you decompress a Shorten file, everything that was in the original .wav is there. This is unlike MP3, in which the compression step throws away information that can never be recovered.

For distribution and archiving purposes, the Shorten (.shn) files themselves can also be burned onto a CD-R as data. One big advantage to archiving Shorten files is that you'll never have to deal with digital audio extraction (DAE) from an audio disc, which can sometimes produce clicks and other undesired artifacts.

For Windows users who wish to use a command line version of Shorten, you've come to the right place! When shortn32.exe is used along with the etree.org batch files, it's surprisingly robust and easy to use, minus all the bells and whistles of a graphical user interface.

Changes in Shorten 3.6.1 :

- Shorten is now a native Windows executable (Cygwin is no longer needed)

Important Notes :

- However, you can use Multi frontend 0.983 beta, a general graphical user interface. It has support for Shorten console, too.
- If you get an error when you try to run the frontend, you need one of the following files (the error message indicates which one): Visual Basic 6 Runtime files or mscomctl.ocx