best external cd burner to convert SHN file

I do this all the time! Nothing special or expensive is needed to do this at all. Before you burn, you convert the shns (or flac) to wavs on your hard drive. Then you burn the wavs. You can use any cd or dvd burner to do the burning. Nothing special at all is needed, just make sure the burner is faster than usb1.

Maxnewid,
I'm intrigued by your talk of vinyl bootlegs. Do you mean that you have LPs of live shows cut from reel to reel tapes that are not "authorized" to be sold by the artists?