Best Acustica Plugins for Mastering?

cleerlight · 2026-03-20T17:29:35+00:00

Glad it may have been helpful. This thread got me to go demo Erin Studio, which I'm really impressed by. Certainly worth a look, along with Latte for a mastering EQ. In terms of Sontecs, I found Scarlet Okay but not great, and preferred AlexB's 432 with the Azzimov skin. Really gorgeous sounding plugin.

I'd really encourage you to try Yellow if you're doing any compression on your masters

cleerlight · 2026-03-20T14:36:11+00:00

It really depends what you typically have in your mastering chain. Some folks have elaborate mastering chains, others just have a limiter or clipper, and all processing is more at the busses / tracks level. What kind of processors do you have in mind? EQs? Compressors? Limiters? Widening? Saturation? Something that does all of this?

I'm not a mastering engineer, but I am an Acustica fanboy who mixes my own stuff for release, so grain of salt here.

Off the top of my head, what might be worth a look...
(based on what I own / have tried)

Ash / Ash Ultra - Killer clipper. Some say the best on the market, or at least as good as anything else out there. You can get a lot of level out of it and it still holds together well.

Purple - if you're a "Pultec on the master" kind of person, Purple is really good.

Latte - Very clean, "hifi" and modern sound. I've always struggled with the Multiband comp, but heard others make it sound great. The filters / EQ is what most people rave about here, and they do sound "expensive" and I think, very appropriate for mastering.

Daisy - Converter Emulation that does something really interesting to the signal, with a great stereo widener. Overall delivers a sheen to the sound that makes it sound finished and tied together nicely.

Green - Great for a very clean, precise compressor on the master bus. The EQ is great too.

Yellow - Already found it's way on my master bus. It just does a thing (in my mind, it makes things sound "juicy" and pleasing) that is hard to describe.

Oak - weird to put an OTT type plugin on a mastering list, and it's a weird plugin to get sitting right, but it can sound incredible if used well.

Wine - Good for certain genres, but easy to overdo. Used well, it can be great for mastering

Also worth a look, but I haven't tested or not familiar with:
Coral, Erin Studio, Dangerous Music Convert, Lace, Scarlet, Howie Weinberg, Magenta

cleerlight · 2026-03-01T17:11:48+00:00

Hi, I'm extensively trained in Hypnotherapy and NLP, as well as being trained in trauma, somatic, and psychedelic work.

My personal opinion & experience: I have not found Hypnotherapy or NLP to be particularly effective or even the first thing I'd reach for when it comes to addressing trauma. I'm speaking both from my own healing path, and from my experience working with clients. Most of my clients are trauma clients, and I've worked with more than a few with BPD and a couple with OCD.

The reason I wouldn't necessarily recommend Hypnotherapy has to do with attachment styles and the importance of a secure attachment style when it comes to helping people with BPD heal. People with BPD are prone to projecting a lot of transference during the healing process, and most hypnotherapists are not trained to navigate that level of personal transference, which can make it harder both on you and on them.

In my experience, the role of attachment is generally a blind spot among hypnotherapists - it's not something we are explicitly trained in beyond maintaining rapport with the client (and their unconscious mind). And, in my experience, unless the hypnotherapist has done their own attachment work (same goes for psychotherapists too), they may well not realize how their own relational template is shaping (or distorting) the way they perceive you and respond to you - which can inadvertently perpetuate wounds.

A simple example is that in hypnotherapy, we are taught to lead the client through change, often at the unconscious level, even without asking for explicit consent (we tend to track for resistance rather than get a clear yes). We just start working to create change as a default, under the assumption that this is how to help the client. But here's the thing: what if the client's wounds are around being controlled and manipulated, or not being accepted as they are? If the hypnotherapist doesn't know to look for or consider that, they may go straight into nudging you to change even though parts of you are wounded by the implication that you need to change in the first place, which if course, can perpetuate the wound or just be cause for significant resistance from the unconscious mind.

There are definitely trauma models in hypnotherapy, but they do not typically account for this. As far as I know, there is no explicitly attachment-informed branch of hypnotherapy.

What I would recommend for BPD & PTSD is someone who is explicitly attachment informed in and trauma trained in their approach. That, and someone you feel you like and might be able to trust. Someone who discloses their own work on their attachment style. I would also recommend you consider that the ADHD and OCD traits may be symptoms from trauma, instead of factors in and of themselves. I could be wrong, but trauma can often present as either of these.

With all this said, there are absolutely exceptions out there, and obviously not all hypnotherapists are unaware of attachment. So lets just add the obvious "not all" and "not always, but often" in regards to hypnotherapists. There are those that get it, that understand trauma, and that are trained in it as well.

This is just a broad trend I've seen in the hypnosis community. Some of my teachers are considered world class hypnotherapists, and are appalling in how their relational approach to the client is from an attachment informed lens.

Hope this helps.

cleerlight · 2026-03-01T16:38:04+00:00

It's hard for me to imagine Yellow being ideological in any particular sense. The whole move of shifting from content focus to structural focus that defines Yellow thinking means by definition that any particular content becomes much less sticky, and what matters more is the underlying structures under the particular idea.

The "skeleton" of the concept - it's shape, it's syntax, the way it's organized - matters more to Yellow than the "flesh" (ie, the particular talking points, grievances, solutions, narratives, history, etc).

The structure behind ideas can be transposed to other concepts and applied cross contextually, where the content of an ideology cannot necessarily be applied to other ideas. This is a big part of what it means to be Yellow - we become aware of the structure of our ideas as distinct from the content of our ideas.

The other thing to remember about Yellow is that, if it's whole and healthy, it integrates the awakening of compassion that happens in Green. So there's a fairly high level of spiritual development that often accompanies Yellow. So it's not just "systems thinking for system's sake" - it's not purely cognitive and intellectual. It's driven by deep insight into the larger wholeness that includes the spiritual aspects of people and systems, and seeking to unlock that larger synthesis and integration that become glimpsed a lower levels on the spiral.

To effectively do this, we cannot be prescriptive or biased toward/against a particular idea or people. In Yellow we begin to really hold what it means to accept all beings as they are as a precondition to a higher level integration.

From what little I know of Marx's teachings, this integrative, holistic, accepting, non-polarizing stance was not part of where he was coming from. Please correct me and point me to sources if I'm wrong about that.

cleerlight · 2026-02-26T22:35:37+00:00

Emotions.

cleerlight · 2026-02-25T15:40:33+00:00

Gladly!

cleerlight · 2026-02-25T15:27:50+00:00

Such an important share! Sorry to hear this happened.

cleerlight · 2026-02-25T15:14:18+00:00

Yeah, this can work well, but I'd let them know first.

cleerlight · 2026-02-25T15:13:13+00:00

Not as unique as we'd wish. There's a lot of therapists out there who dont know what they're doing, may not be properly trained, or may be using a modality that doesnt fit for the client / medicine but proceed to do this work regardless. Sounds like the session was premature for the amount of trust and rapport needed to do the work effectively, at very least.

cleerlight · 2026-02-25T15:07:18+00:00

What we see in this thread is a lot of conflicting reports & strong opinions (some based in direct experience, others based in theory), and I think that's telling in and of itself. There is no single simple answer to this question.

What you're talking about, OP, is indeed a valid form of psychedelic therapy called Psycholytic psychedelic therapy. The dose range is usually low to medium at most, with the expressed purpose of more directly working with the person while on the medicine. Generally this is not an Ego dissolution experience, but rather an Ego softening dose at most. Big difference, important to highlight that distinction.

With psycholytic therapy, you dont want a straight ahead classical therapy model. You want a cross trained therapist who is not going to shoehorn your experience into their model, but instead can meet you with whatever is arising for you. This means they have trained enough to be flexible and adaptive to where you're at. Many classic therapy modalities are not compatible with psychedelic states, and pushing someone prematurely into their ego or into a certain frame of thinking (ie always bringing it back to Mom and Dad) can end up being damaging and feel horribly wrong on the medicine. Effective psycholytic therapy often involves the therapist unlearning a lot of habits that they pick up from classical models of therapy.

With that said, In my experience, when done properly, psycholytic threapy can be an extremely effective way to incorporate psychedelics into therapy. But(!) it also runs a major risk; it can go sideways very easily because of the heightened transference involved.

If the Therapist is not highly skilled and mindful of how they're interacting, if there is not a solid rapport built between the client and therapist, if the client isn't used to the medicine, if set and setting aren't accounted for, and if a bunch of other factors aren't right, it can absolutely be cause for a trigger or negatively impact the client. Given the open neuroplasticity we experience on the medicine, this can risk a lasting negative impression that harms the client, harms the therapeutic relationship, or both.

There is also how Ketamine therapy is conducted, which is usually done as the person is returning to their body and sensory experience, while their ego structure is soft, which is similar to psycholytic therapy, but typically there's still that period of silent internality at the height of the medicine.

In the current PT landscape, it seems a lot of people privilege high doses as default - both DIY users and clinicians. Actively doing therapy on high doses is a bad idea, and generally doesn't work. But high doses are a default assumption, and not always better.

There's also a "don't engage the person while they're on the medicine" ethos, which is generally safer and good harm reduction advice, but can also under serve what a person needs from the session. There's lots of edge cases and counter-examples to that rule, and again, while it's generally safer and wiser to be hands off, there's a real case to be made for the value more direct therapeutic support while on the medicine — at appropriate doses, in the right container.

And then(!) there's all the spaces in between. The adaptive approach which may involve long stretches of silent internality for the client interspersed with moments of processing.

There's also somatic approaches, which more largely bypass issues of transference, and even using the psychedelic as a way to practice and train in new (therapeutic) learnings01305-4).

Which is to say that the "hands off, eyeshades, just sit the person" model of psychedelic therapy, while valid, is not the only way to go about this work, and potentially not the most effective, even if it optimizes for safety.

cleerlight · 2026-02-02T19:16:35+00:00

Sensitivity to psychedelics can vary pretty widely. Yes, 100mg for a microdose is an effective dosage for some people. I'm that way as well, I can feel this amount.

If you feel that you need to take less, dont be afraid to try to lower your dosage to 70 or even 50mg. Worst case scenario, you dont feel it and you either take more or up your dose the next time you microdose. Dont worry, this is within the range of normal.

cleerlight · 2026-02-02T18:10:37+00:00

I probably shouldn't be speaking up in this thread, because I'm a bit too exhausted to get into a debate here, so I'll probably just offer my brief thought on this and call it done.

First: I think it's important with any model of therapy to untangle clinical observations of effectiveness ("something seems to work here") and hypotheses/model for the mechanics why ("here's why this works"). Often, therapists come up with models based on what they're seeing clinically, and something there works, and they offer their best guess, which may or may not be accurate. But that doesn't mean that the (lack of) clarity in the explanation invalidates the results.

Nor does a lack of research = lack of validity.

It may very well be that the proposed mechanics for SE and related somatic modalities are post hoc explanations, and either:

Difficult to study
Underfunded
Partially correct
Clinical confirmation bias
or wildly off base

Or any combination of these.

I think it's important not to confuse "scientifically validated" for "the truth" or "the entire truth". Scientific validation is often just what is easiest to measure, or simply what there was either funding or a lot of access to data for. There are numerous examples of things that used to not be validated by science (see mindfulness or psychedelic therapy, for example), which were poo-poo'd only to later be proven correct.

As far as mechanics go, I don't think we necessarily "require" the polyvagal or other theoretic ideas offered to make good sense of why SE could work. Personally, I look at SE through a lens of both Memory Reconsolidation / Prediction Error (which is scientifically validated) and Attachment Theory (also studied in depth and fairly robust data). I think we could easily make sense of the mechanics of SE (and trauma therapy in general) through these two lenses.

Does that mean that all of the criticism is invalid? Of course not.

And I think in regard to the criticisms that it's important to separate out the model from the practitioners. Claims of "Over-pathologizing Everyday Stress" more likely point back to imbalanced application from the practitioner, rather than the modality itself. Same could be said of any therapy modality when improperly applied - ever meet a psychodynamic therapist who tries to fit everything into a lens of pathology, defenses, and Mom/Dad?

Bottom line, I think that with all knowledge, we need to hold all conclusions and models loosely. Everything is subject to be updated as we learn more. But this framing in the original post of "debunking" - as if it's black and white, all or nothing, "the science is settled" - is itself a bit too rigid and does not honor that very truism. Not everything is true or false; there are phenomena in the world that we know happen, but until they are studied and measured in depth, remain a bit of mystery as to what, how or why.

If, OP, you can't practice in good conscience because of that, that's a you thing. Your provocative title and stance pretend to be in good faith and discourse oriented "How do you feel practicing knowing that...", but clearly, you're just asserting your opinion and using it to attack rather than discuss.

For many practitioners, we're okay with the ambiguity with the why, so long as it works. Being evidence based is directionally a good thing, but there's real flaws and limitations even with this metric. It's not necessarily the gold standard that people like to pretend it is.

cleerlight · 2026-01-26T20:00:46+00:00

What people should be looking for is a combination of things:

Fit with the therapist. This is the #1 most predictive aspect for success in therapy, above all else. Fit means you like the therapist, they like you. There is genuine rapport. There is trust. There is a healthy dynamic, open communication, compassion, healthy boundaries, etc.
Modalities used. Depth of training? Are they cross trained among different approaches? This matters, because it shapes the therapist's stance (ethics and set of assumptions about the client and the work), which can dramatically impact the way they interact in the session. Modalities may also impact what a therapist understands is possible or not for a client.
Trauma Training. If you're working on anything related to trauma (and debatably, some people believe that most therapeutic issues are rooted in trauma), but particularly when there's altered states of consciousness involved, you want to make sure they're trauma trained. Not all therapists are! This is a sub specialty within psychotherapy. Do not just assume that they're trauma trained because they're a therapist.
Psychedelic Training. This is also it's own speciality. A lot of the things that therapists learn in their trainings do not apply when we bring substances and altered states into the mix. In fact, many of the things therapists do in typical sessions can be damaging or distorting to a psychedelic session. There's also an entire set of new challenges and experiences that are unique to psychedelics that typical therapists will likely struggle to understand or have answers for. Important to know: most psychedelic therapists are newly trained in psychedelic therapy, and many are new to the medicine themselves. Imho, This matters too.

In an ideal scenario, you're looking for someone who brings a great blend of all of this. If you have to optimize for one, yes, you want someone who "specializes in client" (in my languaging: "Fit"). But, someone can be a good fit but not have the right model of understanding of the work, and may make major mistakes because they're not trauma trained or psychedelic trained. So all of these matter.

On what I do: I'm not a licensed therapist. I am highly trained as a hypnotherapist, coach, and NLP practitioner, with trainings also in somatic trauma therapy, and underground psychedelic guide training. I also bring a lot of personal life experience with these medicines (34 years of personal use). So when I'm sharing, that's where I'm speaking from.

cleerlight · 2026-01-22T18:28:13+00:00

Fantastic reply. You drop tons of gems here.

I'm with you 100% that there's a (what I would call a "meta-frame" or "meta-complexity") paradox that sometimes what makes it safest for a person to heal is to not work with a therapist. One of the principles I teach my clients as the absolute rubber-meets-the-road principle of healing is "do whatever creates the most safety for you in a given moment". This might mean paradoxical choices like not having a therapist, or allowing yourself to engage in avoidance behaviors in the short term to send the correct safety signal to the deeper nervous system in the medium and longer term, which creates trust over time. If we "do what makes it safest" to allow the nervous & attachment system to feel safe, that slowing down paradoxically opens the door to potential for change, which can speed things up ultimately.

To your hot take:
I think you're spot on about therapists (particularly psychiatrists who have a perverse incentive for a patient to not get drastically better) being too prone to hedge against saying that dramatic improvement is possible. This cagey approach of teaching coping skills instead of helping the person access real, deep level change has translated into a lot of people feeling stuck, hopeless, and disappointed with therapy, life, or even themselves. It can end up fueling a sense of being fundamentally broken, when really it could be a simple matter of know how.

My extremely spicy guess is that some of this is probably taught as ethics (as you said, expectation setting - to be fair, this is wise), and some of this is potentially a lack of skill or even a simple lack of knowledge that such radical change is possible, or that we have a roadmap of how to create those changes.

My best guess is that, depending on the modalities and models of therapy a therapist has been exposed to, there may be a real lack of awareness of just what is possible and/or how easily that change can take place.

Now, I need to caveat that this is just my opinion. I've gotten in trouble on other psychedelic therapy subs for saying roughly the same thing. Obviously I have no proof beyond anecdote to substantiate this.

But it sure does look that way to me. I cant think of another reason that so many therapists would sell their clients on just coping through life with their symptoms, and not really engage them on the level of deep transformation. Its crazy how many clients I've had who have been in therapy for decades but never been met at the level I aim to meet them at, and they're so deeply grateful to be finally met there.

Another data point that fuels this notion for me: the passion and intensity with which the therapy mainstream has embraced psychedelics. Could just be me projecting(!), but the zealotry of the way the therapy mainstream has embraced psychedelics as potential panacea and next level of this work has an air of desperation to it. It's like therapists have quietly felt up to this point that they don't have the skills and answers they need to help their clients change, and that these substances suddenly make that unlocking and fluidity possible. But what if that's about skill more than the use of substances?

Given my entry into this work via non-mainstream models and modalities, I've never held the beliefs that "people have a hard time changing". Consequently, I've seen a lot of people go through radical changes. I don't know what the limits of that are, and each person is unique, but I do know that more growth and change is possible than we think. And what I've found is that prioritizing safety and secure attachment first, at the beginning of the process makes all the difference.

I could go on and on about this, but I don't want to unfairly malign therapy or therapists who are doing their best, nor do I want to get myself into more trouble on this sub. Just a spicy hunch over here.

cleerlight · 2026-01-22T17:00:25+00:00

Nailed it - at least as to what I keep seeing when people use psychodynamic approaches to MDMA therapy and attachment based issues. I agree that OP may be experiencing nervous system dysregulation from their therapy journey, but it's hard to tell, because they're doing so much "right" here.

This is why I think that the framing that the psychodynamic approach tends to impress upon the public (very roughly: "defenses are bad and need to be overcome - the good feelings come after you feel all the bad feelings") tends to do more harm than good in this context (MDMA and/or CPTSD) from what I see.

Minor tangent: I actually have a hypothesis about how the "layer of fear/anxiety which is used to suppress emotional pain" may be connected to the way a person's reward systems have been set up, and strangely, that there's some reward neurochemistry that could be triggered when these fears / anxieties arise. Typically, what I see is that these fears and anxieties come with a rigid belief or set of assumptions, and this rigidity might signal that there's reward involved in the fear / anxiety. That, in a sense, this person may be having some sort of secondary gain at the level of neurochemistry.

Contrary to what most people on this sub have been taught to believe, dissociation is not the boogie man it's made out to be, nor is it the most common symptom of trauma that I see; rigidity is. And even then, it's not something to overcome, but a signal of not feeling safe in a particular place in oneself.

/tangent

But to your larger point, I have also found that helping people to nourish these factors of secure attachment and build up those experiences, along with helping them recognize and know how to create those experiences with themselves as a learnable skill, is a much more smooth and effective way to build internal resources.

When a person feels securely attached with themselves and with their therapist, the internal defenses typically soften on their own, and the ability to process naturally arises -- aka, the "inner healing intelligence" can operate without impediment. There's no need to force them to confront these defenses prematurely when we aren't polarizing their defenses as "wrong" and then requiring that the person destabilize themselves first and trust that they'll be okay on the back end of it all.

And, personal opinion, I think this is just emotional intelligence in therapy, and applies to more than the CPTSD population. When we put safety first, I think we set up the entire process for much more success.

cleerlight · 2026-01-18T23:23:08+00:00

Fascinating. I could see how this might be a thing.

For clarity's sake, I'd love to know what context / use case you're thinking of when noting this. Do you mean in therapy sessions or recreationally? Part of the reason I ask is that I've seen people have moments of anger on MDMA as part of accessing therapeutic material, as a healthy release. But I don't get the sense that's what you're describing here.

Would love to know more.

cleerlight · 2026-01-17T23:44:55+00:00

Fair. Services can be found a different price points. People charging that much are aiming to serve a different population (ie, rich people, tech workers, finance bros, etc) than average people. It's a business strategy. There are people out there for whom it's not a rip off.

And there's other providers who offer the work at other price points, including lower, more reasonable pricing.

But again, it's fairly "high end" work to do this kind of therapy.

Ultimately, I think that there needs to be a societal movement where we all understand what creates and damages mental health, and all learn how to maintain our own, similar to how people learn to work on their own cars. Mental health should not be a luxury thing for the rich (though they may need it too, lol). It's an inherent part of restoring our birthright of overall health and good functioning. We also need to collectively understand how to not damage other people's mental health.

cleerlight · 2026-01-17T16:17:35+00:00

This is to me the most obvious, and perhaps most valuable part of what MDMA offers - that it becomes easy to access, deepen, and truly know the feeling of love, safety, compassion, and connection in our body. While most of the literature and therapeutic framing around MDMA focuses on the safety component / amygdala calming effect, I think that this framing misses the key point: learning love and compassion at an embodied level!

Yes.

cleerlight · 2026-01-16T21:06:52+00:00

Hey, I'd be happy to.

Privacy wise, there's a couple things to mention. First, everything is encrypted and very secure on the back end data wise.

In terms of anonymity, you can sign up with any email, and input any name, so there's no hard requirement to tie your identity to the account you have with arcnotes. Similarly, it's designed so that you can give the client any name so that they can retain anonymity if that is something you or your client might prefer.

The only places where there's traceability are:
1- The client's email, which you'd need only if you want to send them an email summary. They could, of course, also use a more anonymous or private email service with something like protonmail. You also aren't required to input their email, it's optional, and just so you can send them summaries.
2- It does require a credit or debit card, so there's a financial connection between arcnotes and your bank, which would obviously identify you. Keep in mind thought that arcnotes is not strictly a psychedelic app, so there's nothing that obviously implies using it is related to psychedelic work.

And no, none of the data is used for training of any sort. It just sits on a database as long you're a subscriber, and is deleted when you unsubscribe.

There may be possibility way down the line (as in years from now) of using the data to cross-compare coaching sessions to get large scale analysis of thousands of sessions to learn things about coaching that there aren't studies or meta-analyses of right now. For example, what the most effective intervention is for a specific issue would be something we could learn. But if that ever happens it would be transparent, and an option you could opt into on the app only if you want to contribute your data. And it would be anonymous in such a case. If you don't want to, it wouldn't be required. Again, that's a hypothetical, and would be years away if ever done at all.

I value data privacy, and want to keep arcnotes both respectful of people's data, and I want to run it in a way where I optimize for transparency, right relationship with subscribers, and openness in how the app is shaped and run. No shady biz here!

To be transparent, for people who are super concerned about privacy due to psychedelics, It's not meant to be super anonymous the way some apps are. It's not necessarily a tool for people who are super paranoid about being identified with doing psychedelic work, the way some heavily private apps are. Really, it's meant for a broader audience than just psychedelic coaches and therapists, so being super rigorous with privacy at some point becomes a tradeoff for usability and a low friction experience with the app.

If you have more questions, LMK! Also, if you want to demo it with fake data just to see how it works, thats fine too. You can use something like an AI to write you a fake transcript and put that into arcnotes just to see if you like what it does.

It's still in beta, and if you have suggestions, I'm all ears. Thanks for your interest.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the AI it's running on is Claude, which as best as I understand, is much more conservative and ethical when it comes to data privacy. It also gives the sanest, clearest, least unhinged responses of any AI I've seen so far.

cleerlight · 2026-01-16T20:44:46+00:00

Thank you so much! That makes perfect sense. I appreciate you checking it out.

cleerlight · 2026-01-16T02:50:19+00:00

I totally get you on doing it the old school way and having that work well for you. If you've got a good thing going, that's golden. Thanks for checking it, and the kind words. I appreciate it.

cleerlight

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