It's so interesting that all our ears hear different tones. I find increasing my volume creates a more fluid tone, where I may have to add gain.
I agree you have to be at performance level, in order to get the accurate tone for that level. Otherwise all your presets will have too much bass.
I just read an interesting piece, by a national recording artist's guitar sound tech, (this was specific for guitar tone using any type setup), where the tech setup the guitar cab at ear level. While standing directly in front of the cab, he set it at stage level and dialed in his comfortable tone.
So I decided to give it a try and was surprised to find all my presets would cut you in 2, with no bottom whatsoever. It was so thin that I thought I was playing through a cheap modeler and 6" speaker. I also found one interesting thing. I was using an EQ block at the beginning of my chain to just cut lows and highs. It was sucking the life out of the guitar. So I set up a low and high cut filter at the beginning. That made an enormous difference and was immediately louder and fuller. Then I went into the amp block's cab settings and adjusted a few things with the EQ. I kept in mind the fact that when the cab was set back on the ground the bass would increase. So I set my lows accordingly, just enough to hear them. Not only does my cab sound way better, and has a fuller tone, it made a huge difference to FOH. Before I tried this my tones in FOH were ok, but a little lifeless. I had to use my channel 1 EQ, at the end of my chain, quite aggressively to get the guitar to sit in the mix and sound similar to the cab. After doing this the FOH is perfect with little EQ. I just cut under 100hz and above 8k.
I have been told many times here there is no right or wrong and this worked well for me.