Do not know why I never thought of this, but I've always felt that with factory presets, I never had enough ambient pad sounds, and just a bunch of not so useable presets... felt I always had to create all that I need myself (being very cumbersome to be honest)...
Then, with the V-Synth I started to create template presets for pad sounds, thinking I could just change the sample used to get a lot of different ambient pads from only minor tweaks on the template... that worked really well actually...
The point is, that this is also possible with any other synthesizer... just tried it with the REV2's factory presets... and practically every single program can be quickly turned into a gorgeous pad sound for ambient... the only thing needed to do is change the VCF/VCA envelopes ADSR parameters... like a sustained sample on the V-Synth, an oscillator is also a "sustained sample" being modulated by the envelopes... same thing... and I'm still puzzled I did not think of this before...
This makes me realize that my V-Synth also has some built in template editor where you simply select a type of sound that you want, like pad, plucked, blown etc... and the envelopes are then set up to quickly assume the correct settings for such a sound... it's a smart way to get loads of quick new sounds from existing sounds... and where the samples have movement in themselves, a synth like the REV2 has all the modulations going on from the original program... making it possible to think of the programs as "samples" in a sense... and from the REV2 front panel, editing the envelopes is really fast and quick... the cutoff and env amount knobs are the only other parameters that needs a tweak sometimes in addition to the envelopes, to do this... in a few cases, the auxiliary envelope may be in use as well and need some tweaking, but in most cases it's just the cutoff, env amount and VCF/VCA envelopes that needs tweaking... put on some deep reverb from an external FX processor/plugin, and you have hundreds of gorgeous moving pad sounds at your fingertips
any original sound will do... basses, FX, drums, leads... anything.
Somehow I could wish for a feature in the REV2 that could quickly set up these parameters for typical instrument configurations like PAD, LEAD, PLUCKED, BLOWN, ORGAN etc... some randomization feature would also be cool... the trick here is that it should be possible to "mix" this into already existing programs... I'm not talking about "INIT" programs for special types of sounds because the timbre and modulations of an existing program should be kept intact... it's only the envelope contour that needs to change...
just some thoughts...