You know, this whole "flame" kind of thread happened based on your comment looks to me simply like the argument about the terminology (the meaning of particular words), and doesn't seem to be anyhow meaningful.

If we think thoroughly, one can say that anything that comes through the cables, amplifiers and speakers is lossy. Just because it's not the direct transmission of the sound from the music instrument to a human ear through air. As we all know, our ear is a pretty complex audio sensor that consumes sound waves from multiple directions (perhaps, the unlimited number of directions) - direct and reflected waves. So if someone says that all the performances of every rock or electronic band are "lossy" just because the sound gets transmitted through a limited number of speakers (not to mention the number of sound effects getting applied - distortion, hi/lo-frequency filters, reverb, compression etc.), that guy could be onto something in actual fact. That position also has some grounds and rights to exist.

Also, I doubt one can precisely emulate the actual performance of an artist with just 2 (5, or even more) recorded channels. As every performance, from the listener perspective, also depends on the location, current place's acoustic parameters, etc. (say, if you are in a garage with metal walls, the sound is reflected differently than in an open field or mountains). As well as different people attending a music event will hear different kind of sound, simply because each of them will be located in a different position and receive different/unique sound waves from different directions. From this perspective any record of that exact concert would be "lossy" (not the same) for every single person.

Some people in the thread discussed whether the audio record keeps lossless after mastering. Well, you could say, applying any filter to a record (regardless of whether your intention is to make it sound better or not) distorts/changes the record anyway. Especially keeping in mind that it may involve eq-filters and compression for different frequency bands. I mean, do we lose something in that case? Sure. Do we call it "lossy"? I suppose most people don't.

The other guys tried to use the limitation of a human ear as an argument as well. But this is also debatable. Where would we stop that way? Exclude all the frequencies above 22KHz off the consideration while speaking of "lossless" vs. "lossy"?

I might be mistaken here, but I think applying the term "lossless" to CD quality is a convention amongst the most people simply to have some kind of a common measurement standard to refer to as a basic "unhurt" record in the digital space. Whether it is correct or not technically... Well, I am not sure it really matters now.

PS That being said, you seem to have got down-voted wrongly. While you may have an opinion which is a bit different from what the other people have regarding the use of "lossless" thingy, you don't seem to have said anything bad. I am voting you up myself just trying to negate that wrongdoing. :) BTW, I even didn't know that one can down-vote here. Every time I visit this web-site, I feel like I got back in 80s in terms of how this forum looks like (UI/UX). I wonder when YC will finally do something about that and align it to the contemporary web standards. It's super weird that the company funding most promising startups in 2016 has a forum-like kind of stuff lost 20 years behind. Sorry for the off-topic.