What does it mean to “test” a FLAC file?
A feature that sets FLAC apart from all other major lossless formats is it’s ability to self-test itself. Basically, any FLAC file stores an md5 checksum of the audio content contained within the file (also called the FLAC Fingerprint) within the header of the file itself. By using FLAC’s “test” function, you are able to run the check on the audio, compare it to the fingerprint stored when the file was encoded, and confirm that they are the same. This is extremely useful when trading files through BitTorrent as it will confirm that the files you were downloaded completely and without being corrupted. You should run a “test” on every batch of files after every time they are transferred, especially over BitTorrent.
