You should keep in mind as a beginner, that not the amp is the crucial part of the tone, but the IR (cab). It took me quite of time to realize that.
You'll get a lot of good and different advices here. Try everything out, not everything works for everybody, it depends pretty much on your guitar (e.g. pickups, wood, strings, tuning), playing style, preferences, etc. That's why from maybe 30 downloaded presets from other people only 1 might really work for you.
Here are the things that bothered me at the beginning and a few tips to start with (hopefully it helps you too):
- Amplification: cheap speakers are not as good as a FRFR with a 12" speaker (I bought an active Atomic CLR, there are also other options, chek them out)
- Gain staging: optimize all the inputs and outputs (guitar -> Axe FX -> FRFR), find some tutorials. When building presets, watch for the horizontal VU meter under "Utility", it should not be peaking over 0 dB (very handy for leveling different presets)
- When playing loud/live, cleans are sounding great, high gain (which you're certainly interested in) on the contrary, something is wrong. The solution is simple, it's probably a must for gain tones, low cut and high cut in the cab block (100 Hz - 9000 Hz is good to start with, for djent I believe you can even go like 200 - 6500, it's up to your taste). I recommend the cab #060: 4x12 FRACTAL GB M160 (a recommendation from another forum fellow), it works with about any amp (try some other stock ones anyhow before you start buying IRs. I'm not saying don't buy, just learn the IRs before you do)
- I knew almost nothing about a sound chain and sound engineering (above all about frequencies and "sitting" in a mix with other instruments) before Axe, it's worth to invest some time in it, it really pays back. Check the sound chains, amps, cabs, used effects from your guitar heros. Do they use a compressor or a noise gate, or both (popular in djent)? If you don't know how they work, learn it and apply to your personal taste
- This is my workflow with amp and drive setting: finding the sweet spot on the Master Volume (paraphrasing others: "when you feel the juices start to flow", "until the tone doesn't blossom any more and all you hear is only compression, then back up a little"), on the same page on the front panel there are Presence and Depth ("try turning them all the way down and up to find your optimal settings, this applies to almost all knobs you touch") Bass/Middle/Treble to taste ("like on the real amp...use your ears, not your eyes"), turning the Input drive and Overdrive if present to taste ("less is more", "until it starts fizzing and than back up a bit") and let's end for now with: if the tone is still not focused enough, put a drive block in front of the amp and select T808 OD with drive set to 0 and tone between 8-10 to your taste (note: with the newest Quantum firmware I rarely find a need for this drive block filter trick)
- If you'll be generally using effects like reverbs and delays for the clean parts, unlike in the real world, you may put them at the end of the sound chain. A lot of us do this and I like it better then in front of the amp
Have fun and really use your ears. Your tone has to have an adequate proportion of bass, middle and treble, too less of any of those will lead to an unbalanced product. If you play with a band, craft your tones in the context of a band (like leaving the bass to the bass). Don't bother with advanced parameters before you gather enough experience with the main controll knobs (those on real amps). It also helps a lot to tweak via front panel instead of Axe Edit, you'll have more precision in finding the sweet spots.
