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It definitely opens up a whole world for sound pallets.
It's worth noting that while synthesis is great for ambient music, there exists a means to the same end in sampling and manipulating organic sounds.
If you were to take a sample of water droplets into a bucket or a metal on metal scratch and reverse it, you get a new and unique sample, then to further challenge yourself, only use compression, pitch shift and time stretch to get the sound you're looking for.
A lot of producers are quick to throw on expensive plugins to get a great sound but neglect the simple tools available to everyone that make for great—not to mention unique—high-fidelity audio.
Cheers

I'll certainly discuss this topic with my producer friends, Not sure what they do on this front.