> It is not quite clear to me how the gravitational waves of two merging bodies would be different between a merger of normal stellar objects and black holes.

> It is not quite clear to me how the gravitational waves of two merging bodies would be different between a merger of normal stellar objects and black holes. No "normal stellar object" can be more compact than 9/8 of the Schwarzschild radius for its mass. (This is a result known as Buchdahl's Theorem, first discovered in the 1930s.) Gravitational wave emission when objects of that size or larger merge is much less energetic compared to the total mass involved than the merger of black holes, which merge at the Schwarzschild radius; also the predicted waveforms are different, because there is actual matter (nonzero stress-energy) present when normal stellar objects merge, whereas black holes are vacuum (zero stress-energy).