A: No! Using compression is not necessarily a good thing. In fact some products actually reduce the number of usable track unless you use compression. Not so with the DPS24. The DPS24 uses linear recording to make absolutely sure that what you record is exactly what you get during playback. Some claim that compression is needed to save hard disk space, but this isn’t necessary any longer since large capacity IDE drives are available at low cost. This is demonstrated by the recording times available with the standard 30 GB built-in drive, which provides over 2.5 hours on 24 tracks at 48 kHz, or on 12 tracks at 96kHZ.