In the interview "Watermark recording process". The Music Magazine (Australia) July/August 1989

THE SET UP:

They use a variety of keyboards but the mainstays are a Yamaha KX88master Yamaha DX7 Emulator 111 Oberheim Matrix synths and Akai S900 but particularly Roland's D50 and Juno 60.

Enya: "The Juno is one of our favorites. We had intended to replace its parts with better sounds but we couldn't find better substitutes so we left them in. It's not always possible to have all the sounds I want for a song at the time of composing .I'd usually start with the D50. But most often, sounds suggest parts and the ones I use then are usually used on the final recording. Like on Storms in Africa... that arpeggiated line on the Juno 60 was the basis of the piece."

"The Akai S900 is my favourite toy at the moment. I really like it very much - that and the Mac, they're a good pair. I did the whole Swimming to Cambodia score, the Jonathan Demme film, with one drum hit for the entire percussion sampled into the Akai, and it sounds like 50 different things. It's a lovely drum with a lovely sound to it, so I goofed around with it a bit and that's all there is. I don't think you'd ever suspect that it's just that one hit."

Set de Charly en la gira Signos/Ruido Blanco (1986-1987) Del lado izquierdo podemos ver la Linn 9000. Abajo se encuentra la Akai S900. En la época de Doble Vida utilizaba dos S900.

"The house thing had too many rules by 1990 and I decided I wanted to explore. I’d been using the 303 since 1986 and now it was time to explore the Akai S900 - without that machine you would have no jungle.”

@1:10 Mr. Saunderson credits the S900 as having been used on Big Fun

In this photo Eric Sermon is seen with a Akai S900 MIDI Digital Sampler behind him

When asked in this reddit thread what kind of equipment Optical uses, he responds:

"I have owned (and still do mostly) as best as I can remember: Mackie 32/8 32 channel - (I have had 3 altogether), 3 x Emu E6400 Ultra (also E6400 orig), Akai S750, S900, S1100, S3000 samplers, Alesis Quadraverb, Focusrite Green Eq x2, Focusrite Green Compressor, Focusrite ISA430 Producer Pack, Lexicon Alex, Lexicon MPX1, Alesis MidiVerb4, TC Electronics Fireworx, TC Electronics Finalizer, Joe Meek VC1, Drawmer MX40, Sherman Filterbank, CryBaby Wah Pedal Boss Pedals - Too many, Novation Basstation, OSCar, Sequential Circuits Pro1, Prophet 5, Wurlitzer, PPG Wave 2.1, Neumann TLM 105*, Fender Strat 1972, Oberheim/Viscount GM1000, Korg Z1, Kawai K1r, Otari Status 16R Mixing Console with Eagle Automation. BSS DPR-402 Compressor. and more I can't recall right ow ;o)."

*The Neumann links to the 103 because the moderator who approved this post believes Optical wrote 105 by mistake. If anyone believes this to be in error, please follow up in the comments section so that we can adjust :)

This sampler is listed 4th on the list of samplers used by PSB on this site.

"A few years ago I picked up 3 AKAI S900s for about 100$ each, and this year I got an AKAI S950 (for the time-stretching option). "

"We also use quite a lot of old stuff, because I've still got things like a PPG 2.2, and we've used a Prophet 5, Juno 106 and Jupiter 8 because there's a lot of arpeggiated stuff. A big problem with a lot of modern sequencers is that you have to write arpeggiation in yourself- there isn't actually a machine which arpeggiates, which is a shame because it's nice when it's more random. We use S1000s, S900s, and an FZ1. I tend to use the FZ1 as my main sampler just because that happened to be the one that I bought."

"I used a Korg T3 which belonged to Dead Or Alive, and that has a lot of good string sounds. Cubase was the main software package, although it wasn't used throughout, as there's not even timecode on some tracks. The Yamaha grand piano was there, and a Korg M1. I had a Fishman pickup on the viola, which is a fantastic English design, and a Barcus-Berry violin. I used my old Oberheim polysynth, and an Akai S900 sampler with a lot of 8-bit violin samples done for the first solo album, which were still perfectly good thank you very much! Then there's a D550 module, an Oberheim Matrix 1000, a lot of drum samples on an Akai S1000, some from an Alesis drum machine, some Prophet VS, a few bits from a Yamaha TX816 rack, and an OSCar solo on 'Ukraine'. I still use the Yamaha KX88 as the master keyboard because I like the touch, but it could do with more splits and it's not very easy to program. But there's less equipment here than on my first solo album — I hadn't really rushed out to buy any new equipment."

In an interview with with The Archivest Dj Lethal said that he used this back in the day.