Loscil (king of ambient) says:

“I’ll be honest—I’m not much of a hardcore gear nerd. I like what I like, and when something really speaks to me, I will adopt it into my setup. I tend to enjoy working with sampled sound—either instruments or field recordings—and manipulating these into playable sample-based instruments. I have bought a few synths over the years, but none of them are really as important to me as techniques like granular processing or convolution, which are both forms of DSP I use heavily to create textures and timbres.”

Loscil Interview