They are compression formats similar to a "zip" file and recreate the original file on the fly. You can burn a disc of off a flac or alac as a redbook cd playable in a regular player. Check the wiki...
How Does Lossless Work?
Does anyone know of any printed material that describes how ALAC & FLAC operate? These are lossless formats however, they are using compression. Is this format removing something or is it compressing then uncompressing on playback? Looking for hard evidence that these formats are in fact bit-for-bit equals, or not, to master quality AIFF's & WAV's.