You can see two of the EL8-X compressors in this picture Joel shared to his Instagram account.

In the rack at 46 seconds, you can see two Empirical Labs EL8-X Distressor units mounted below his headphone amp.

Rob Swire of Knife Party [formerly Pendulum] posted on his Twitter account the provided image of his studio holding two of the mentioned Empirical Labs EL8X Distessors in the top of the far right stack.

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends. It is visible in this photo from the same interview.

Vocals: Waves Renaissance & Digidesign de–essers, AMS reverb, Zoom 1202, Lexicon PCM81, Watkins Copicat, Empirical Labs Distressor, Federal, Gates, Fairchild 666, EAR 660, Neve 1176 & Awa G7201 compressors

"I used two Renaissance de–essers on Chris's voice that were doing different things, and then a stock Digidesign de-esser. That was it for the plug–ins I added on this session. The Sonnox Oxford and the Eoisis were not out yet at the time.

"The analogue things I did on the lead vocal are really interesting. As I said, I initially mixed the songs on my own, because the band was in England re–recording some songs, so I knew I might have to recall each song. But on this song I pretty much nailed it, apart from that Chris wanted the vocals to be more exciting and different. In the end the vocal had some AMS non–linear reverb on it, while the main sound came from an old Zoom 1202 reverb and a Watkins Copicat delay, plus a special patch that I created in the PCM81, which is a much bigger reverb. So it's a combination of things, but you don't really notice them, all you notice is that Chris is in a very present, big room. When I had found that combination 'Violet Hill' really became a song, it really came alive, because his voice was able to fight through all the stuff that was going on and make it personable. There's no reverb on the rest of the track, which is another reason why the lead vocal sounds so huge: it's not fighting another bunch of reverbs. If you send everything to reverb, you don't hear it, but if you send only one thing to reverb, it'll be huge.

"For the main part of the song I had a Distressor on the insert of the lead vocal, and I sent this to another five compressors: the Federal, the Gates, the Fairchild 666, the Neve 1176 and another Distressor in Nuke mode. They're all coming back individually on the board, and it was a matter of blending those compressors. As usual in my way of working, the compressors are there to give attitude and tone, and don't necessarily compress. For the end bit of the song, where it's just Chris and the piano, I used the Awa G7201 limiter/compressor. It's an Australian compressor and it has an incredible air and presence. It's a unique sound that you can clearly hear at the end, as it's the only effect on the vocal on that point. Finally, the church group background vocals are sent to the same combination of reverbs as the main vocals. No other effects, no EQ. It means that all the vocals in the main section blend together."

@ 0:08 the distressor appears underneath the UA Apollo.

In this documentary, at 9:40 a pair of Distressors can be seen in Jacob's rack mount.

Two Distressor EL8-X rack units can be seen in this photo that Tycho posted to Instagram with the caption "Wiring up the studio patch bays."

In an article when asked how he makes such a rich, warm sound, Scott Hansen replies:

"Then I've got these things called Distressors, they're these Swiss-Army-knife-type compressors. They're kind of tape-saturation emulators, so that's another layer of tape and harmonic distortion. Usually, after that, I go into the box, and there are a few techniques to warm things up or give [the tones] this rich sound. [Those techniques are] usually convolution reverbs and delays, things like that."

Speaking about the recording process for Toro Y Moi's album "Anything in Return," Different Fur Studios owner Patrick Brown says the drums often went through an Empirical Labs EL8-X Distressor, Empirical Labs EL-7 FATSO Jr., and GML 8200 EQ, "...to fatten them up, make them hit harder, make the kick really snap, and to add a little bit of softness and harmonic on the top end so they didn't sound too brittle out of Reason."

can be seen at 10:00 in this video

Mentioned by mixing engineer Michael Brauer as being used on "Violet Hill" in this Sound on Sound interview about the production of Viva la Vida & Death and All of His Friends. It is visible in this photo from the same interview.

Bass: EAR 660, Altec 436B, Dbx 160, Akai S612, Moog MKPE

"The bass was interesting. I had the same bass track coming back on two channels, and on one of them I had the EAR 660 compressor, going into an Altec 436B compressor, going into my Moog MKPE three–band parametric EQ, all going via the inserts. That channel was for the low end, giving the sound its fullness. On the other channel I had a Dbx 160, crushing heavily, with the bottom end taken out. That gave the bass its punch and mid-range. I also sent the basses to an Akai S612 sampler. A friend of mine turned me on to doing this. I don't use it as a sampler, but as a distortion device. If you put the Akai in microphone mode and you overload it, you get really nice warm distortion that you don't really notice, but it sounds good. If I want something more vicious than the Akai, I'll use the [Thermionic Culture] Culture Vulture instead, which I feel is one of the best pieces of equipment for adding some attitude. It's great for when tracks are recorded too cleanly. Finally the basses, like the drums, went through Bus B in my multi–bus compression setup, which consists of Distressors going into my Avalon E55 EQ."

In this YouTube video at 0:28 you can see that Kenny has two of these in his rack.

Toru Kitajima uses the Empirical Labs EL8-X Distressor in his Studio SAUNA, as confirmed in an interview with サンレコ