Originally posted by Death55
Doesnt that defeat the object of dynamics ?

The whole idea behind a compressor is to control the dynamics, not to get rid of them completely. When going over a certain treshold, the notes will get compressed, which evens out large peaks in your playing that are a) annoying to hear and b) hard to work with in recordings/live settings...

Usually you only need a compressor for clean sounds. When playing with a dirty sound, the distortion is taking care of the compression already.

Compression does not add sustain, it only controls the output peaks in your playing.