Quite a few people say they like Cronox for novel pad sounds. But...can I ask how you usually construct these pads?

I see the onboard oscillator option. And that you can import a long (pad-length) sample and fiddle with it. And that you can stretch a shorter sample up to 8x with the time function (although the sound will obviously change a lot).

But I guess I'm a little surprised that the second and third of these options seem work-arounds for the fact that samples get played in 'one-shot' mode with no looping.

Not complaining - just wondering if I'm kinda missing the best way to approach this instrument?

Besides the use of samples in conjunction with the modeled osc you also have the modulation matrix which is quite flexible and enables complex routings which help make moving pads.

Think of a simple example, the LFO is routed to filter cutoff, you can do this with several components of CronoX which expands sound development possibilities.

This is an overly simple overview but keep in mind there are many connections that can be made within a single patch.

Even without using samples CronoX makes interesting pads.

Actually I see two "standard" approaches that may be combined: First even with the one "analogue" oscillator you can do a lot, as you can modulate the symmetry and combine that with the Spread what gives you 5 detuned Oscillators.
Second you can even lengthen the sample (with even
more changed sound mor than 8 times by routing a slow modulation source to the Time parameter, this was used a few times to lengthen samples to much more than 8 times the original length. When I remember right Kenfen made a great pad out of a snare sample this way.

Hope this helps

Peter

One more ....
I just received my "Phantasy Bank" from Electronisounds (www.electronisounds.com)
and its fantastic !!! Lots of "Lush" sounds,
its so good I made a (very) quick mp3 just
playing a few notes with four of the sounds
that come with it
www.linplug.de/PhantasyBank.mp3 (0.9 Mb)

Thanks a bunch, Junebug! Another great CronoX Preset CD!