I'll give my review of Q1.00 in simple descriptive layman's terms as at this stage, what matters most is the sound that comes out of the amp, rather than me speculating on precisely what new discoveries and improvements cliff has made from a technical point of view, and I completely understand why he may want to keep the specifics of those things secret... I will have a general guess where I think improvements have been made though! I wouldn't be me if I pretended I wasn't interested in the specific details!
Q1b has allowed me to remove quite a lot of EQ processing to get the sound I want. Now Q1.00 has allowed me to remove even more. There is no longer the need to cut out all the sub bass or the harsh fizz or sculpt the mids with graphic EQ blocks. Overly fizzy, one dimensional distortion and stiff feeling 'not joined together' amps were my biggest criticisms of g2 and now not a problem with g3/Quantum.
Before Quantum, the distortion characteristics seemed to all be in one fizzy/roary lump. The harmonic balance of the distortion seems much more balanced now.
Each component part of the distortion characteristic (grunt/bark/roar/fizz) seem to act independently of each other throughout a sustained chord, giving a highly detailed multi-layered quality to the overdrive. This is the case across the board, but its particularly noticable in cascading gain stage amplifiers. This happened with cliff's new tube modelling algorithm.
Secondly, each gain stage seems more 'joined together' and the resultant nature of the compression seems much more realistic and forgiving. Things like pinch harmonics are much easier to achieve. Fundamentally I suspect that the way in which each circuit reacts with each previous and subsequent circuit within the amp has fundamentally changed. I feel each gain stage and the power supply/tranformer react when I overload the input of an amp like I never did with g2.
Would this be a fair assesment of roughly where the improvements have been made, Cliff?
Of course this is pure speculation based on what I feel with my fingers and what I hear with my ears using the axefx after using tube amps my whole life.
Anyway, whats really important to me is that I now tweak less and play more. I'm having too much fun with this firmware!
Great job and thank you, Cliff!