Aspects of the present disclosure relate to techniques for signal compression. Certain aspects described in this disclosure can be implemented in a method for wireless communication by a distributed unit (DU). The method generally includes compressing at least one reference signal (RS) in one or more first set of resource elements (REs) of a symbol and data in one or more second set of REs of the symbol, wherein the at least one RS is compressed using a first compression type and the data is compressed using a second compression type, and wherein the first compression type is different than the second compression type; and sending, to a radio unit (RU), the symbol having the at least one RS in the one or more first set of REs and the data in the one or more second set of REs compressed using the first and second compression types, respectively.