My, what a lot of fuss over one persons opinion.
First of all I cannot recall ever saying anything about barking sounds, so we can just ignore that. To endlessly go round and round in circles some people say it is ok for them, other people feel it is not good enough. Adding effects to a mono sampler does not make a better quality sampler. I talked about getting quality multisamples of acoustic instruments to sound as good as the best quality preset sounds.

I mentioned comic effects because I remembered reading a post about it (which turns out rgtaa says he wrote) which I thought summed up the capabilities quite well. This is a long way from Steinway territory though, which after all was the question. I can also remember other posts in the past complaining about the limitations in the sampler and pretty much agreeing with my experience.

I don't know of another arranger with sampling I would be happy with. The genesys looks interesting but I have only heard the demos at Frankfurt and not had a hands on myself yet. It is anyway in a different price bracket. Personally I could do with gigasampler in an arranger.

The best piano sound is personal, so there is no point in discussing my preferences, you should listen for yourself and make your own mind up, as I said before. Everyone has their own perception of quality, let alone the quality they can afford at whatever price level they decide on.