I program all my synths between 3 choices:
Reason (through Rewire) - mostly for Thor, boosted with a good tape saturator for big fat leads and you're good to go
Vanguard - good stuff, pretty traditionnal substractive synth, the trancegate is pretty useful for bringing life to pads or simply make those poppy leads in those Sumerian Records bands.
Or various samples scattered all around the WolWilWeb
Those are pretty simple and traditionnal "trance-like" sounds, pretty easy to do: take a substractive synth, pile-up a couple of sawtooth, or even better, "supersaw", slightly detuned, and shift some at the superior octave or two. Then play with the low pass filter. In Reason with Thor it's pretty easy with the Multi-Oscillator...
Playing around with synthesizers is something really awkward in the beginning, but you get used to it. The thing is to understand how a sound is composed. When you understand this, you can recreate probably anything you want, at least with substractive synths. FM, graintable or whatever else type of synth is a little "harder" to approach, but as anything, it comes with practice...
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6505151/CalltoArms/Examples/wheneverydays.mp3
Here's a fast example made in 10-15 minutes, simple Reason patches and one take-quantized keyboard... Done really fast. I could help you if you wanna get a little more serious in synth programming.
