You’ve downloaded a show or two from http://bt.etree.org and now you want to convert the shn files to mp3 to take with you on your iPod or MP3 player. This tutorial will walk you through the steps to do just that, using OS X.
First things first, make sure you’ve downloaded and installed xACT and iTunes, both of which are free.
There are two steps in converting your .shn files to .mp3. The first is to decode the .shn’s into .wav files. After that’s done, you’ll encode the .wav files into .mp3’s.
Decoding .shn files with xACT
Encoding .wav files with iTunes
- Launch xACT and select the decode tab
- Click the add button
- Navigate to the .shn files you want to decode, select them all, and then click Add files
- Now you’ll need to select the output – I use and suggest .wav. Click Decode when you’re ready
- You’ll be prompted to choose a location to save the output files. Select the same folder where the .shn files are located and then click Choose
- Go put on a pot of coffee. The decoding process only takes a few minutes.
- When it’s completed you’ll be back at the decode screen but there won’t be any files in the decode list. Feel free to close xACT now.
Encoding .wav files with iTunes
- Open up iTunes and select iTunes from the top menu, and then Preferences… from the drop-down list
- Select the Advanced tab from the top menu, and then Importing from the lower menu
- From the Import Using: list, select MP3 Encoder
- From the Setting: list, select your quality preference. I happen to have a lot of space on my portable MP3 player, so I opt for Higher Quality (192 kbps)
- It also annoys me to have songs playing while they’re importing, so I disable that feature by removing the check from the box labeled Play songs while importing. This is entirely optional. Click OK to return to iTunes.
- Now select File from the top menu, and then Add to Library… from the drop-down list
- Navigate to the folder where you saved all of the .wav files from xACT, select that folder, and then click Choose
- iTunes will now import all of the .wav’s into iTunes. Find all of the newly added files (usually at the bottom of your iTunes list, but it depends on how you sort your music) and select them all. Once they’re all highlighted, right-click (ctrl-click for you one-button folks) on any of the selected songs and choose Convert Selection to MP3 from the pop-up menu.
- Remember that pot of coffee you put on while the .flac files were decoding? Now’s the time to get a cup. While iTunes is encoding your MP3s, a status indicator will appear in the left window (see image below). Depending on how “fast” your mac is (processor speed, memory etc) and how many files you’re encoding, this step can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour.
- Once all of the files have been encoded, iTunes will probably beep to get your attention. Before you start listening to your music, now’s a good time to get rid of the .wav files, since they’re no longer needed. You should notice that ever other track in iTunes is highlighted. These are the .wav files – get them out of iTunes by clicking the delete key on your keyboard. If iTunes asks if you want to delete the files as well as remove them from iTunes, feel free to do so (you should still have the source .shn files if you ever need an uncompressed version again)
- That’s it! You’re done. You can now tag the files in iTunes, transfer them to your iPod etc. If you need to get at the MP3s, they will likely be located in Mac Hard Drive:Users:you:Music:iTunes:iTunes Music:
Related content: How to convert .flac files to .mp3 using OSX
Great tutorial. One question, though. When I add the files to iTunes I have them tagged as one album and disc 1 of 1 (if that’s the case). From there, I have the tracks numbers as they are supposed to be: 1 of 12, 2 of 12, etc.
When I sync to my iPod, I can’t access the whole album. Tracks are individual within the album (1 of 1, 1 of 1, etc). Am I doing something wrong, or is this just the way the system works?
An excellent guide. For more shn introduction or software to convert shn to mp3 on various OS, look at here:
http://www.soft29.com/convert_shn_to_mp3_wav.html
This has been super helpful…there was an especially great show I attended years ago in college that I grabbed from archive.org and was clueless as to how to listen.
As for a copy of xACT, I found this had the most up-to-date version:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952
Happy decoding!
I have Xact and itunes. When I try to convert the .shn files with Xact, I get this error message: “No magic number found.” What the heck does that mean?? Help!
Thanks so much. It was very helpful. Would have been completely lost without this!
This was increadably helpful-thank you so much! The only (small!) issue I had with your extremely easy to follow instructions is that iTunes must have come out with a newer version since you wrote this, so some of the info/screen shots are not accurate any more, but I still didn’t have any trouble figuring everything out.