Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. An access point (AP) may use wireless local area network (WLAN) signaling fields in a multiple user transmission preamble to communicate with a number of stations greater than a threshold. For example, the AP may determine that the number of stations is greater than the threshold and generate a compression indicator and an indication of the number of stations to include in a first signaling field. The AP may then generate a spatial configuration indicator in a second signaling field based on the number of stations and transmit the first and second signaling fields in a preamble of the multiple user transmission. Upon receiving the preamble, a station may identify the compression indicator and number of stations, and the spatial configuration indicator in the first and second signaling fields, and decode the multiple user transmission using a determined spatial decoding scheme.