Which audio format is best when writing CDs to be played on a common everyday CD player?
Well, if you have various formats to choose from when you're burning a CD, WAV ripped from the source CD would be the best because it would be equivalent in sound quality to the original.
Audio files seem to be always downloaded in mp3 format.
A WAV takes about 10mb per minute of audio. So, a 5 minute song would be approx. 50mb. That's a pretty big file to download even if you have DSL or cable. An audio file compressed in MP3 can probably be 5 to 10 times smaller than a WAV. That is why MP3 is used for downloading audio.
Is a mp3 player required?
Yes, if you want to play MP3s.
What is the difference between the various formats?
These are probably basic questions to some - but important to me. Can you help!!!
That's a pretty big topic to cover in just one post. You could probably find a lot of the info your looking for by doing a few searches with Google. Here's a few links to get you started:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/http://www.audiocoding.com/wiki/http://www.google.com/Rob