Hi Sonicake team,
First, thank you for the V1.1.0 firmware — adding NAM (A1) support to the QME-50 was a meaningful upgrade, and the community has been making great use of it.
But we need to talk about what comes next:
On June 2, 2026, TONE3000 and NAM creator Steve Atkinson launched NAM Architecture 2 (A2-Lite), and it changes everything for embedded hardware.
A2-Lite was engineered from the ground up to run natively on ARM Cortex-M7 chips at 600 MHz — at just 50% CPU, with no lossy conversion and no quality loss. That is precisely the chip class inside the QME-50.
The paradox is hard to ignore: if this pedal is powerful enough to run A1 with conversion and quality degradation, it is almost certainly powerful enough to run A2-Lite natively — and with better results. The harder engineering challenge is already solved. And since A2 is fully open source, there are no licensing barriers. Your team can begin integration today.
The performance gap is not marginal.
In the largest blind listening test ever conducted for amp modeling — over 1,000 participants, 100,000+ ratings, MUSHRA methodology — A2 outperformed Neural DSP Capture V2, IK ToneX, and Line 6 Proxy by a wide margin. A2-Lite, the embedded version, still beat every one of those commercial modelers despite running at a fraction of the CPU cost.
A firmware update could move the QME-50 into the same tier as hardware costing 5–10× more in terms of amp modeling accuracy. Depending on the freed-up headroom, it could also allow the CAB slot to be activated for an IR simultaneously — which would be a genuine game-changer for this pedal.
The competitive situation is urgent.
Mooer — which had never supported NAM at all — confirmed this week that a firmware update with A2 support is coming before the end of June. They are entering the NAM ecosystem for the first time and going straight to A2, skipping A1 entirely. NUX has made the same commitment. HeadRush, Blackstar, Lava Music, and Chaos Audio are already onboard. VTR Effects, a small boutique builder from Brazil, shipped A2-Lite natively as a free update to existing owners within days of launch.
The bar has been set publicly and it is rising fast. The QME-50 has the hardware to stand alongside all of them — it just needs the firmware.
This is also a market argument.
NAM A2-Lite is a firmware story, not a hardware story — it was built to run on gear people already own. The compact multi-effects format with integrated expression pedal, exactly where the QME-50 sits, is the fastest-growing niche in affordable guitar processing. These users are the core of the NAM ecosystem.
Reaching them with a firmware update costs a fraction of launching new hardware — no manufacturing, no distribution, no consumer re-education. Sales of the Matribox 1 would surge again. Reactivating your existing installed base is the highest-ROI move available right now.
Please add this to your roadmap.
The community is watching — and ready to help test.