Now that I have the audiobytes and work at home the large majority of the time, I've been getting into streamed and downloaded music. I've so far been very pleasantly surprised by the quality but perhaps this has more to do with the genres of music that I've been listening to. I've been finding that acoustic blues and light jazz is mastered very well.
I have other problems though. The biggest one is the noise coming from my HP's laptop fan. I complained about this some time ago and now HP has an "improved algorithm" that keeps the fan on all the time at low speed rather than cycling it off and on (high speed). Anyway, to make a long story even longer, the noise from this improved algorithm from three feet away is 80dB. I've been finding that I'm winding up with nasty headaches at the end of prolonged listening sessions and I attribute this to the high SPL required to fight my fan's parasitic noise.
If you are setting up a home office and plan to listen through a laptop or PC, compression may be the least of your worries.
