These sound great @philroyjenkins! Really inspiring. This motivates me to step up my game!
I have not made anything close to ambient, but I make samplebased hiphop on the AR using nothing but the AR to sample, chop, sequence, mix etc. I completely get your point about the sound of this thing, I love it but sometimes it’s a lot of work to make it sound more clean or crisp.
I also have an OT and everything I make on that sounds weirdly ‘acceptable’ without any effort, compared to the AR which is a beast you have to tame. Sometimes I grow weary of the hard hitting, deep AR sound, but as soon as I make something without it I start to miss the weight the AR gives to everything. It’s hard to describe really, but I think everything you play through the AR gets some kind of slightly fuzzy punch and weight which I’ve not been able to replicate on any other machine, and I really love. A base width filter just for the samples would be a blessing indeed! I also would like them to add samplerate reduction to give us another flavour of degration.