"I remember going totally over the top with the Akai S950 – I managed to get it off this bloke in Carlisle for 200 quid."

Aphex Twin lists the Akai S950HXC amongst the gear used in the recording of his 2014 album Syro.

"To this day, nobody believes that the tracks on Big Loada were a single pass of me sequencing my Akai S950 from my DR660," Tom says, in this article.

"The Akai s950... that's what I used when I made hip-hop beats. That's my old one, that's what I started with. We used it on the first album. The drums from 'Needy Girl' were on there, but we haven't used that recently. The MPC is just more powerful. The s950 is good when you you're dealing with loops and you want a filter. At this point it's just an old school sound."

As I browsed through the sleeve notes on Moby's albums I noticed that the gear lists documented in the 1995 release Everything Is Wrong are almost identical to his current setup. Could it really be possible that this successful musician had no spare cash to spend on new studio gear during the last four years? "From Everything Is Wrong until now I've bought a vocoder and a new sampler and that's about it. On the one hand I'd love to get a bunch of new equipment, but on the other hand there's something to be said for working with equipment with which I'm comfortable. I'm thinking that at some point I will actually switch over and get a full Pro Tools setup and start doing things more in the computer, but for this record I didn't feel compelled to do that."

MOBY GEAR Apple Mac running Steinberg Cubase sequencer. Soundcraft Spirit 24:8:2 desk. Alesis ADAT digital multitracks.

SAMPLERS Akai S950. Akai S1000. Akai S3000. Akai S3200.

SYNTHS/KEYBOARDS Casio CZ101. Emu Proformance piano module. Oberheim Matrix 1000. Roland Juno 106. Roland Jupiter 6. Serge Modular Synth. Waldorf Pulse Plus. Yamaha SY22. Yamaha SY35. Yamaha SY85.

PROCESSORS Dbx 160XT Compressor. Eventide DSP4000. Soundlab Vocoder. Yamaha SPX900.

SEQUENCERS & DRUM MACHINES Roland TB303. Roland TR606. Roland TR909. Roland TR808.

OTHER EQUIPMENT Hafler Pro 5000 Power Amp. Technics 1200 turntables. Ibanez Electric Guitar. Fender Precision Bass.

In this video from Hip-Hop Wired, at :06s you can see the s950 in the background of Premier's studio. You can see it again in this YouTube video from AkaiProVideo.

Two Akai s950s can be seen stacked on top of each other at 2:39 of this making of “The Rockafeller Skank”.

"Starting with the Akai S950, S1100, then later S3200XLs, I hunted for sounds to feed my samplers."

In a June 1995 Sound On Sound interview, Utley says:

I asked Adrian if he multisamples his old monosynths so he can effectively play chords: "I do that, but you can't use any kind of massive filter or modulation effects because it'll go weird over the pitch range, so you have to use the internal facilities in the sampler. I did have a Roland S330, which is quite good in that respect, but I've just flogged it because I'm going to get an Akai S1000. Geoff uses an S1000 and I've got an S950, which is also really excellent. Even though it's 12-bit it's got a grainy sound which I really like."

At 19:08 in the YouTube video titled "Studio Tour: DJ Jazzy Jeff on His 'Creative Utopia'" by Sweetwater, DJ Jazzy Jeff is seen showing an Akai S950 MIDI Digital Sampler placed on a shelf in his studio.

In this video at 1:57 Tom shows Akai S950 sampler

An Akai S950 sampler can be seen in Nujabes' studio in this picture, underneath an MPC-2000XL. The picture comes from this 2003 Sound & Recording interview (of which the magazine printing can be found here), which has been translated into English here.

　当初の制作システムはシーケンサーがMARK OF THE UNICORN Performerで、サンプラーのAKAI PROFESSIONAL S3000との組み合わせ。レコーダーとしてROLAND VS-880を仕様し、ミキサーにはROLAND M-12Eを使っていたそうなのだが、トラック制作へのめり込むにつれいて機材も徐々に拡充していった。

Nujabes’ initial production system was a Mark of the Unicorn Performer sequencer combined with an Akai Professional S3000 sampler. He says he used a Roland VS-880 as the recorder and a Roland M-12E as the mixer, but as he became more and more absorbed in track production he gradually expanded his array of equipment.

「サンプラーはすぐにAKAI PROFESSIONAL S950に移行して、その後は容量やシステムの相性でE-MU E5000 Ultraを使い続けています。あと、トラック制作を再開して１年くらいして、シーケンサーはSTEINBERG Cubase VSTに移行しています」

"For my sampler I quickly switched over to an Akai Professional S950, and later for capacity and system compatibility reasons I started using an E-MU E5000 Ultra. I currently use an Akai Professional MPC2000XL for rhythm sampling—the nuances in the tone sound better to me on that. But I still use the E5000 Ultra for overdubbing samples. Also, about a year after I started making tracks again, I switched over to the Steinberg Cubase VST for my sequencer."

[...]

メインの作業スペースの反対側にあるデスク上にはEVOLUTION U-Control UC-16やAKAI PROFESSIONAL MPC2000XL、APPLE PowerBook G4/800MHz、iPodなどがセットされている。なお、デスク下にはROLAND GP-16やAKAI PROFESSIONAL S950などが置かれている

Set up on the desk opposite to his main workspace are an Evolution U-Control UC-16, an Akai Professional MPC2000XL, an Apple PowerBook G4/800MHz, and an iPod. Under the desk are, among other things, a Roland GP-16 and an Akai Professional S950.