A set of IEMs that costs $1900 means it is facing a hard battle to win any value for money awards. In the price range the Astell&Kern x Campfire Audio PATHFINDER is in, the typical customer already has more disposable income on hand and is a big fan of personal audio in that they'd either want to have excellent sound on the go or simply not have the room for speakers/headphones. More likely than not, they would also have a better idea of exactly what music genres they prefer and what they do not. A safer tonality in itself is not necessarily a selling point here, as long as what you get appeals to you and does it well. Keep this in mind, in addition to my own interests, and see if you can either demo the PATHFINDER in person or at least check out multiple reviews from others to get a general picture of what it is like to use.

Astell&Kern were kind enough to allow me to test the PATHFINDER for a couple of months and I took my time to just listen to it for a week before placing it on my IEC711 coupler for frequency response measurements. I took initial notes so as to also account for any brain "burn-in" effect and so I can confidently tell you that the PATHFINDER is a rare example of sounding better than it measures. It does so with a carefully designed and implemented driver configuration that works well for a few different music genres including rock, country, old school pop/rap, as well as acoustic jazz and piano tracks on the instrumental side of things. It does not work as well for electronic music, female vocals, string instruments, and complex orchestral music. I'd even say the technical performance is bested by a few less-expensive IEMs, but ultimately it comes down to whether you wish to enjoy the music or scrutinize it. On my end I can certainly see folks willing to try and even purchase the PATHFINDER, and that's more than I can say for a lot of kilo-buck IEMs. It's just not for everyone, and I too have others in the price range that I prefer over the PATHFINDER.