Actually the Pipes campaign worked, and even if the final product took something like one year more than expected to be completed, there was regular updates (monthly this year : there was a post last month and another one is coming soon). The covid crisis didn’t help but Pipes is really in the final stage of completion.
I think the multiple outputs was the main lacking feature, but I wasn’t after that personally. You are right, Synesthesia was more drummer oriented before, but this one is more melodic instruments oriented. The immediate sample access wasn’t a seller for me neither, but is apealling to musicians who need to switch from a large sample to another one immediatly on stage, without loading time. With 32 or 128 giga of storage, you can jump form a big multi sampled grand piano to a Rhodes, in immediatly.
For people looking for more experimental tools, the main feature is the ability to run custom Pure Data patches (it seems a lot of patches will be provided with the machine), that could drive the machine into unexpected territory. It was originally included to run midi effects in the box, called tweakers, but it should be able to run anything Pure Data can do.
And it was also announced that it can load Linux audio effect format. So there is a lot of things that i didn’t see elsewhere.