shntool
Shntool is the ultimate audio file checking and simple conversion utility. The most commonly used feature is it's ability to check audio files of virtually any lossless format for sector boundary errors and, if necessary, fix those errors. Fluency in shntool should be a pre-requisite for anyone who wishes to do lossless audio file trading. Since it's a command-line only application, many users shy away from it's use out of sheer intimidation caused by a lack of a GUI. Allow me to dissuade you from feeling scared any longer....
The first step to using shntool is installing the program and the binaries for each file format you wish to use. This tutorial assumes you're using a Windows-32 based system, though many of the terms here carry over to the Mac OSX environment. If Linux is your OS of choice, I'll assume you're comfortable enough with the command line to not need this page at all. All of necessary program files and file format binaries can be found
downloaded free of charge here. You'll want to place a copy of shntool.exe and each .exe codec you plan on using into your Windows PATH directory (on most systems, unless configured otherwise, this will be C:\Windows directory).
Note: In order to run shntool, you will need an updated copy of cygwin1.dll in your PATH as well. This comes packaged in the .zip file if you download shntool from the main
www.etree.org page, but also can be obtained as the last item in the list linked above.
Once you've got all the files placed into the PATH directory, you're ready to go. It's that easy. You may want to read through the shntool documentation to get a firm grasp on the powerful utilities that lie at your fingertips, but if you're just interested in running a few simple commands, here's some quick guides that may help you out.