Probably, you would find the sweet spot anywhere 5:1 to 6:1. So you have to increase the ratio up to 7:1. But when the vocal is aggressive you need to compress more.

Generally, in normal vocals 2:1 to 3:1 ratio is good to compress the upper dynamics.

The more ratio you apply, the more compression takes place. Ratio decides how the compressor reacts to the input audio signal. You need to tweak these settings as per your own need. However, compressing is an art and there is no hard and fast rule to apply the same settings on your vocals. Keep reading… Rap Vocal Compression SettingsĪssuming your compressor plugin doesn’t have any rap vocal preset hare we will create our own preset by changing the parameters of the compressor. In the next section, I will go through all the possible settings you have to apply to precisely compress rap vocals. If, your compressor plugin doesn’t have a rap vocal preset you need to create one by setting up all the parameters yourself. I will share you with the cheat sheet to rap vocal compression in the last of this article that you can use to modify those presets. You can use them and modify as per your need. Today, all popular compressor plugins have 1 or 2 presets dedicated to rap and hip hop vocals. With rap vocals, the best place to start is finding a rap vocal Preset in your compressor plugin’s preset library. It’s different than normal vocal compression where you apply 3:1 or 2:1 ratio and the work is done. most of the area of vocal has spikes that you need to control by applying the compression precisely. When you record rap or hip-hop vocals one thing you can notice that the singer sings a lot more aggressive than other genres.

How to compress vocals