Are there any that are specifically designed for this? Thank you.

 

FM, Granular, Wavetable. FM will create the longest without repeats.

 

Pigments

 

Rob Papen - Predator VSTi
Synapse Audio - Dune VSTi
Camel Audio - Alchemy VSTi
TheSynthFactory - Azimuth VSTi

 

Modulation is, obviously, a necessary function of FM and so lots of slow cycle patches and examples are to be found. But as the M in FM would hint, over all cycle length isn't dependent on synthesis method. It's dependent on the LFOs and envelopes. For example, the Quantum/Iridium can get to 4+ minutes per cycle regardless of which engine is being used. A Batumi module can hit some silliness like 25 hours per cycle.

 

Rob Papen - Albino 3 Legend

 

Mid 80's to Mid 90's Pad:

Korg Wavestation VSTi

Ram1 42 VS Bell Pad
Edit and disable ( untick the speaker) for :

RAM11
RAM2
Leave only the third one on ( No 15 SynOrch)

That's the best pad sound for my ears.


Mix this with the E-Piano from Native Instruments FM7, add some VST effects like Reverb and slight delay then tape sim and you have a killer Vangelis type Epiano+Pad sound that will rival $4000 synths.

 

Wow! Thank you all for all the examples. I've got a lot of research to do.

 

nord lead 3 hardware is quite good

 

almost any will do, but freeware like Surge is always better

 

All roads lead to Rome... some of the lushiest pads I've made were just random samples stretched out in Renoise/Bitwig's sampler with a volume envelope. If you understand what you're going for, then you can probably reproduce it through any method available. When it comes to pads I love to play around with romplers/samplers and FM synth.

 

For me lush Diva, soundscapes Omnisphere, sucker for Luftrum, The Unfinished and Arksun banks for both of the synths, check out Skyline for Diva, Equilibrium for Omnisphere, Luftrum for both really.

 

Well, good answers here as there are many ways to skin this cat.

If you've a controller with aftertouch and a way to emulate the X-Y pad then my money is on a Wavestation or a Wavestate. Sheer evolving space. Not the easiest to pick up admittedly, but plenty of presets to learn from. Wavestate is of course more capable (esp. filtering and FX), and while it has the original 'station waveforms (+ a metric shitton more of course) can't do the amount of layering like Wavestation can.

Fun fact: it's possible to program a Wavestation performance that exceeds the machine's polyphony capability two times with a single key press.

 

Sample mangling + sampler is always a good time. Some tonal source material and PaulXStretch is more fun than a barrel full of monkeys.

 

the CS-80 pops out some of the thickest lush pads, you can never go wrong with it if it's a pad you need, it can produce most anything...as for soundscapes I always liked Absynth for stuff like that but it seems to have simply just disappeared from the market as I can tell, but there's other great new stuff like pigments and Omnisphere, the Waldorf Naive is great as well, one of my favorites!

 

I agree, in that many complex pad sounds can be done with most synths, as long as you have some serious fx firepower. Which is the same premise as manipulating an audio sample. Especially for making some complex sounds. The synth for the base sound you make becomes almost like an oscillator for a wavetable.

Is there something wrong with Steinberg Padshop that noone even mentions it? Omnisphere is great. The Korg Wavestation was one of the first innovative and "evolving" synths because it had wave sequencing, so I would also look at some of their cpu-heavy modern plugin synths.
Virus TI is extremely capable of crazy evolving sounds, but have fun using the emulator for the same amount of automation (a lot of work).

If you want crazy, evolving, and digital sounding pads; it's the best use case for the Hydrasynth. But if you want very lush, warm sounding pads straight out of the synth; I'd pick a real analog synth over some kind of VA. For a plugin option, probably Diva, but even Arturia emulations.

 

ASM - Hydrasynth
Modal Electronics: Argon 8, Cobalt

older...
Novation: Super Ultra Nova, Super Nova, Nova
Yamaha: AN1x
Roland - JP8000
...

 

Padshoop is just fine, pretty great actually...all of steinbergs stock synths have come a LONG way and can almost always fill any gaps in a track. The main reason I stopped using Padshoop was because somehow it to deactivated and I don't want to mess up any of the other installs. It's a pain really, having legit purchased versions of cubase along with...other ones. Real headache.

 

Any granular synth paired with Mikron Cascade works great. You could also try Paulstretch, but in my opinion, it sounds a bit too chaotic.