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What is the least compressed signal?

Hello everyone.I was wondering what everyone's thoughts might be about what is the least compressed front end signal? A friend of mine recently told me that radio signal is compressed. So I thought maybe a direct connection to a CD player? Or, since CDs are pretty compressed, maybe a record player? Thoughts?
the reason I ask is, my friend recently gave me a fantastic pair of speakers. And I've been listening to the radio through them. He had a disgusted look on his face and told me I was not using these speakers how they were meant to be used, because the radio signal is kind of crappy and compressed. I would love to use the speakers as they were intended. Meadowlark kestrel hot rods hooked up to an Integra receiver w/ kimbers
ddjr

Showing 1 response by marklings

marklings
61 posts
 
The previous post about the 2 different types of compression is mostly relevant.
When you fear that tuner signal might be compressed you are talking about dynamic range compression. DR compression is really bad from the SQ stand point.
File compression not so much. There's a subtle difference bewteen a high quality compresses file and a non compressed one (or lossless compressed which is to say same quality as non compressed)
DR compression is immediatly audible instead and there's not really much you can do about it except go look for another source 
CDs as a rule are not compressed at all. They present the full Red book audio signal in non comprsssed format.
I am sure I added a lot of confusion, sorry about that . . .
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