I make a basic pad with long attack and release then turn up a long delay with the time turned all the way up and the feedback up pretty high. Then set in the second FX slot a long reverb with the wetness turned about half way up or more to really take the edge off the sound.
Then I take just about any waveform and set any of the mods to different settings, my current favorites are "Spectral Formant" and/or "Spectral Squeeze". Then with your DAW link the mod amount to a controller knob, or just use your mouse to move the knobs while playing. You have to go slow to let the processing keep up and prevent a steppy quality to the adjustments due to the processing time but this makes a really expressive quality to the sound that is similar to a filter sweep but with its own character.
Lately I have actually been using both "Spectral Formant" and "Spectral Squeeze" and linking them to one controller so that they move the exact same amount in sync with each other. The only problem is they get very loud at the higher end of their range so I also have to link in a volume controller that goes down at the top end to keep it evened out nicely.
I would post some demo patches but I am not sure of a trusted download site is that i could use for free. So here's a screenshot of a basic pad I am describing.
The idea behind this is that adjusting the mod knobs in the OSC section is not a smooth operation and sounds very steppy on a dry signal. Cranking up the reverb especially helps to blur this effect and smooth out the sound so long as you don't go too fast. Not sure if processor speed affects this operation overly much so results may vary depending on your processor... or not.
