It's strange. Some people seem absolutely unwilling to learn the interface, but say the sound is synthy. I posted the exposed mp3 of the simple uprightish sound and still got that reaction, though I can't imagine anything sounding less synth-like. (The reaction may have been partly to the brief bell-like tone and a slightly long decay in a very few notes in the Blues piano mp3. I'm not criticizing the mp3 or preset. Just passing on what was said.) But no one who critiqued the mp3's, from what I can tell, bothered to try to edit the sound in the PT demo to get a different sound, even though I posted a link to the fxp, and the PT demo can be downloaded.
Are people so accustomed to ADSR amp & filter envelopes, along with velocity-stacked samples, that anything new pushes them away? I know that there's a general principle in learning a new skill or new language: each small barrier, each unfamiliar element, greatly increases the likelihood that the student will give up. Thus few people who speak a European language learn Farsi or an Arabic language, since the alphabet is different and reading and writing are done from right to left. So, similarly, the absence of familiar controls and the presence of new parameters, each affecting the other, makes some people turn away, even though there are clearly ways to edit the sounds?
Another problem may be with what may be a mindset I've encountered before: a set of assumptions about "novelties." I worked in an office long ago that sometimes required quickly adding up figures. I had a solar calculator that other people often borrowed. Most thought of it as a toy that somehow, through some kind of trick, was able to do things that a "real" calculator was able to do. (Finally, these days, people are taking solar power seriously, but the basic technology for low-level, inexpensive, led lighting has been in place for decades now. But I'm about to go off on another subject entirely...)
I'm not sure that there's a solution. I patiently explained that a background in sampling could lead to mistakes, and that Cantabile offered interesting possibilities.
Oh, well. Maybe as more modelled instruments are introduced, things will change?