I love 80s UK post-punk, and am curious what soft synths (and techniques) can help emulate that sound. Examples: Teardrop Explodes, Chameleons, Fall, PiL, Wire, early New Order, Joy Div, The The, Shriekback, etc. I know, those bands' styles are all over the place, but I think what they have in common is an edgy, repetitive synth-assisted (but not synth-dependant) feel. I've got Sonar X1 and Komplete 8. Do you have any recommended starting points as far as patches, effects, etc.?

Rapture, Dimension and Z3TA all have the sounds you are looking for. The repetitive loops are called arps. It will take time to go through the sounds to find the ones you like, but there is no other way to find them.

I liked Shriekback a lot, and had a quick Google..this Discogs page seems to note all the synths used on the 'Oil & Gold' album, including the names of the patches..might be of interest.

http://www.discogs.com/Sh...nd-Gold/release/932233

Cool! I wonder what effects they used to get everything to gel?

For starters, you have no need to buy another synth since you have most forms of synthesis covered. Since you have Z3ta, have a listen to all the arp presets and you will likely find some along the lines you are looking for. Rapture does those kind of synth lines very well and sound a lot beefier than the original.  here is an old video with a cover of "blue Monday:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtEd7WY7pp0

Yeah, I definitely don't intend to buy any more synths. It'll take forever to explore what I already have.

What I'm wondering is what the "tricks" are for getting that [non-cheesy] 80s sound. I'm not talking synth-pop... I'm talking the darker stuff, which still had a cool beat.

For instance, did they use a certain type (or amount) of compression back then? I often feel like the soft synths I use don't really "blend" together like my old Yamaha SY55 keyboard did (which I bought in the early 1990s). Could this because soft synths have too much dynamic range?

Right now I'm listening to a post-punk song I never heard before (on a podcast), but my ears easily identify it as post-punk. The bass isn't a sub-bass; it's higher pitched. The drums sound like a cross between drum machine and a real sit, and are panned dead center. The guitars are panned hard left and right, and seem to have a very limited range. Synths are subtle pads, kinda dark. Energy level feels high, like it was performed live, though there is no audience sound. It feels like it was recorded quickly, with not much subtlety or dyanamic/tonal "width", if that makes sense.

You know how punk sounds extremely limited, sonically? Almost as if it woudln't matter if it's recorded in a studio or on a four track? (Although of course, it does matter, which you can tell when comparing demos of Never Mind the Bollocks or London Calling to the final versions)

Well, the post-punk I like has that similar "narrow" feel. Not "lo-fi", but more like "lo-complexity". So it has some of the modest, almost minimalist punk mindset, but adds instruments like synths, drum machines, and occasionally brass (e.g., Teardrop Explodes) and of course goes far beyond the punk song structure into more spacious, often dance-oriented sounds. So it's like the disco and punk camps had a truce and created post-punk.