1. A channel detector for receiving a signal from a channel medium, comprising: a path generator adapted to produce a plurality of candidate sequences of bits and decisions regarding logic states of the detected bits in the output signal based on reliability information for the logic states; and a state reducer for comparing the plurality of candidate sequences of bits and the decisions and reducing at least one candidate sequence based on the comparison to produce a set of remaining paths; and a branch metric calculator calculating metrics for the set of remaining paths.