Firehawk FX distorted tones have too much high treble?

[PeterIsberg]

I really like this product a lot in many ways! However, there is, to my ears, more high end "fizziness" of distorted tones than what a normal distorted amp would give (auditioned through line mode and studio monitors like Genelec/Dynaudio, or HD650 headphones). This is mostly noticeable with distortion/overdrive harmonics. I first was pretty sure that the cabinet models high end roll-off was not steep enough. But I measured the frequency response of my own amp and SM57 and also measured the Firehawk emulation of a similar setup and the results suggests the cabinet models are OK! Still the subjective impression of a nastier high end remains.

 

I have tried to work around this by using the SM57 45 angle mic option, and by the equaliser, but a shelving filter is not enough.

 

A very practical workaround would be one more mic option, which rolls off enough to avoid that "distorted lined guitar" typical grittiness. Alternatively, include a low-pass function in the equaliser.

 

I don't know if updates ever going to happen for Firehawk FX but this is in any case my hope. And since my day job is within acoustics, I could also make my own tweaks of the cabinet transfer functions or create my own from scratch, but there is no way to get them into the machine, I am afraid. A simple impulse response load function or biquad coefficient load function would do the trick in this case.

 

If any other user out there had the same issue as me, please let me know how you handled it. Thanks!