Use room reverb so it doesn't sound like you stuffed your head where the mic is on a cab.
For me, lower volume.
Same here. I have some DT-880s that are semi-open technically, but it’s enough to make it not so claustrophobic. As others have mentioned, a little stereo reverb of any variety is huge as well.
For fatigue specifically, I find the high end is what really gets me. Much like putting your ear right inline with a guitar cab, you get all those treble freqs emphasized with a pair of headphones. To compensate, I use darker versions of my favorite IRs or move the mic a notch or two away from the dust cap when using a dynamic cab. This makes it feel a bit more like “standing” off axis from a cab.
Initially, I built a small arduino-based 6 button midi controller that I velcroed to the side of the NC for quick access to more presets when I had it on my desk. Eventually, I realized the 4 did fine for how I was using it. Fun project though!
I haven’t used it in a while, but I’ve used the IR Utility in space designer to shoot IRs of both my real cabs and from other devices. Getting the routing right is probably the hardest part. Aside from that, you are just shooting a 10s sweep with mostly default settings in the utility. Then just convert the resulting track to wave and you are good to go.
