One thing that occurs to me is you might want to implement another slider bar next to the Q1 slider that becomes active only in special mode in which case you would gray-out the current Q1 bar.  As far as I can decipher they indicate different things and it is a source of confusion for the community as people continue to communicate their old Q value which only has meaning in the context of buffer size.  Alternatively, if the Q values in normal and special modes actually do indicate the same thing, at least change the display so that it always indicates the actual setting, regardless of mode, so you wouldn't have to activate the tool tip to check your value in special mode.