Well, generally speaking, any time you change anything related to the air passing through the mass air flow sensor, you need to recalibrate the table that the PCM reads that correlates the amount of air flowing in relation to the frequency value that the MAF actually reports to the PCM.
There will be no off the shelf MAF available to help you, because there won't be any off the shelf MAF tailored to your particular mods. And honestly, changing the MAF to an aftermarket one would likely just make matters worse rather than better, as the table I mentioned above would like be even further from reality. Replacing the stock MAF with an aftermarket one pretty much guarantees that you need to have the car tuned so the MAF can be recalibrated. Most people replace MAFs with aftermarket ones to get a larger MAF housing, so that guarantees that the MAF table will not be correct.
BTW, at some point GM went from an open tube type MAF to a cartridge style one that simply plugs into the air bridge housing. I'm not sure exactly when that took place, but I believe the cartridge type will be even more sensitive to air path housing changes than the tube style was.
Do you get any error codes? Realistically, if the MAF is REAL far out of whack, it flags an error and the PCM ignores the MAF thinking it is defective and goes into open loop mode.
As for your hearing a rush of air, have you checked for air leaks AFTER the MAF sensor? If the engine gets a big gulp of unmetered air, then yes, you can have hesitation because the PCM doesn't know about it to compensate with more fuel.
Anyway, hope my ramblings help somewhat.
__________________
|