I think sampling is as exciting as it ever was. The real interest is sampling your own input sources and making totally unique presets. But you don't need a hardware sampler to do that these days. You can just make recordings with your DAW and edit and do some pre production work on the sounds and then import into those software instruments that allow it. And
Iris2 is one of those. It does some amazing stuff that goes far above any hardware sampler of the past. It can transpose in pitch and time like a normal sampler does but also now easily just do one or the other as well. The spectral synthesis engine can do some seriously amazing stuff.
Some hardware instruments can still do some weird things though like the EMU hardware machines of the past have what is called Transform Multiplication. This unique function merges two sounds together so that frequencies common to both sounds are accentuated while uncommon frequencies are discarded
(also called Convolution). Because of this characteristic, Transform Multiplication tends to work best with sounds that are harmonically rich. Transform Multiplication is a powerful synthesis technique which can produce strange and beautiful timbres. Eg if one sample is the sound of waves at the beach and the other is you whispering after this process the waves end up whispering. Nothing like layering these two sounds.
EMU samplers can also do some amazing stuff too like modulate the pan position with an LFO for
every voice within a preset! So the stereo position of every voice can be moving in its own stereo field at its own rate and depth. With a big pad for example this has to be heard to be believed!
If you can get your own raw materials easily into Kontakt then that is excellent. It means you can experiment on that level as well. There are plenty of software instruments that allow you do it too.