Lossless audio?

Having read most of the replies here and apart from my head about to burst, the question i will ask is very simple. Look at my kit, i want to just sit on my backside, press play and get the most enjoyable musical experience. Now to get that do i stick with cd ?

Thanks  john.

Exactly. .WAV or AIFFfiles won't play on a CD player.

Tarquinh:

nads:

when you burn a CD you make a CD. and a CDP will not play FLAC files. it  needs WAV files.

No, it needs .cda files. Have a look at the file extensions on a music CD.

Well aware of that. The fact remains without them you'll hear nothing. They provide the structure to allow your CD player to work.
Without them there would be nothing.

Nope, sorry dude, the files don't actually exist on the CD at all and they certainly aren't required for an Audio CD player to play the CD. The Windows CD driver creates these files when an Audio CD is inserted into a (Windows) computer and, basically, pretends that the files are on the CD, when in actual fact, they aren't.

johnnyjazz:

Having read most of the replies here and apart from my head about to burst, the question i will ask is very simple. Look at my kit, i want to just sit on my backside, press play and get the most enjoyable musical experience. Now to get that do i stick with cd ?

Thanks  john.

Simply yes. The big rival will be streamed music but I do not see that doing to CD what happened to cassettes and other formats that have all but disappeared.

the_lhc:

Nope, sorry dude, the files don't actually exist on the CD at all and they certainly aren't required for an Audio CD player to play the CD. The Windows CD driver creates these files when an Audio CD is inserted into a (Windows) computer and, basically, pretends that the files are on the CD, when in actual fact, they aren't.