I have been downloading legal Grateful Dead .flac and .shn files from http://www.archive.org/about/about.php Great site if you like live music.

About half of the lossless music is in .shn format and I have been converting it to .flac. Included in the download is the MD5 files. IF I convert the shn files to flac I assume the MD5 files are useless, is this correct? If so is there anything I can do to convert them? I am using Dbpoweramp to convert.

Thanks for any suggestions on how you would handle this!

Yes they are useless.
Get an md5 program like md5summer or easy md5 creator and make a new md5 file.

Thanks for the reply! When seraching on this subject I noticed some comments about DBpowerAMP not being very good at converting .shn to .flac.? Is this true?
Would it be better to convert from .shn to .wav and then to .flac?

I assume you know about etree.org, but if you don't have a look at these links, which deal specifically with Grateful Dead shn and flac downloading:

http://bt.etree.org

http://forums.etree.org

Thanks for the links. Etree seems to be unavailible, they must be doing some maintenence. Ill try later.

most users around here, myself included, use foobar2000 for all of our converting needs. if your not familar w/ it, it is an advanced, full featured audio player and tool that does just about everything imainable, including the conversions that you are seeking. take a look if you haven't already. it takes a while of usage before you master all the features of it, but the basics are pretty easy to figure out. particularly w/ the help of this great forum. good luck

just out of curiosity, why do you need external md5 checksums for your flac files?

When you convert to flac, the encoder computes md5 sums of the raw audio and store them inside the files. To verify the sums just use flac with the -t switch from the command line.

If inputs are equal, then MD5 sums are equal. Hence md5sum checks. But do not despair even if MD5 sums are useless when you convert formats.

You can just compare the inputs, to see if they're equal. Use foobar2000's bitcompare plugin to compare the SHN and the FLAC, and if they match, and the SHN matches its MD5 sum, then delete the SHN.

Thanks, I am starting to understand all the capibilities of MD5.

Another thing I want to be able to do is go back in 6 monthes or 1-2 years and be able to see what the integrity of my flac and ogg files is, to see if any are corrupt, etc. Is this also what MD5 is for? How would I do this if the MD5 is embedded in the file itself?


"To verify the sums just use flac with the -t switch from the command line"

What do you mean by use Flac with the -t switch, do you mean using the Flac frontend?

either flac frontend or flac.exe from the command prompt.

flac.exe
C:>flac.exe -t "your flac file.flac"

flac frontend
hit the test button on the right panel

I mean MD5 sums are already stored inside flac files by default. You don't have to keep external (in separate files) MD5 sums. If flac.exe (or flac frontend) reports success with the -t switch the integrity of your files is ok.

Thanks Beto!