What’s a ‘punchy’ bass sound? It may mean different things to different people! Could you give an example?
Punchy may indeed mean different things to different folks.. many may consider "punch" to be "prominent" in the mix. But the actual sound "synth bass" typically means a certain category of sound, at least according to the presets on most synths. Usually if you dial in a sound labeled synth bass it's a very staccato (fast attack, nearly non-existent release) that is almost like a low end pluck. It's usually in and out fast, and gives rhythm to the track more than really low end presence. And yes compression and EQ techniques can take any bass sound and make it punchier, but some synths just tend to do it really well. It comes down to certain characteristics of the envelopes (which the Model D to my knowledge was never known for having particular fast ones) as well as the filter itself.
For example, the Prophet 10 is not what I would consider a super punchy "synth bass" synth. It can do it, and it has a few sweet spots where the oscillators can be combined in a certain way to give it a certain special snap, but it's primarily better at other things. Contrast that with the AS-1 (which to me is the modern ProOne)... It just BEGS to do this out of the box, you almost have to tame it. There's no searching for sweet spots if you want punchy bass from that synth.
I just reached for some of the first examples that came to mind, not necessarily the best examples (and also YT may not convey the original punch very well).
Smalltown Boy (ProOne I believe)
Don't Go (ProOne)
Everything she wants (Juno60)
Also go through some of Luke Millions videos, he does a good job of getting snappy bass out of many of his synths, especially the Multimoog.. most of them don't seem to come off his Model D:
https://www.youtube.com/@lukemillionmusic/videos