It appears as though I should be happy not to be afflicted with "audiophile-osis".......I know my wallet is LOL

 

Same. LOL!

 

What I'm trying to understand is whether there are any functional upgrades to the 2019 stereo. I heard they were adding a wifi hotspot, for example. I'll end up swapping my speakers anyway but if the headend is changing with new features that's not so easy.

 

Pretty much everyone here just replaces the speakers, DSP and amps. No one really replaces the head unit unless they didn't get the 8" Sync 3 option.

 

yes it's a truck.....but for some of us it's a luxury vehicle that happens to have a bed in the back. It's a luxury daily driver that has the capability of getting down and dirty. It's a truck with a $80k price tag. I really enjoy my trruck and it's the nicest truck I've ever owned. I would enjoy it much more if it had a high end audio system.

 

One rule of thumb is the better the sound system the worse inferior source material will sound on it. XM/Sirius has a serious bandwidth problem. They have too many channels for too little bandwidth. As a result music sounds like a really poor quality MP3. You can test this with Spotify streaming via Bluetooth. The free Spotify streams at 160 kbps. That's pretty decent for a free service. If you pay for the subscription service, the quality goes up to 320 kbps.

Pandora in comparison, streams at 64 kbps, which is why it sounds like crap.

Sirius/XM OTOH sounds even crappier. That's because they're streaming at 32 kbps. Compare that with a standard CD, which has encoded music equivalent to 1411 kbps. No wonder Pandora and especially Sirius/XM sound so bad!

Now some car stereos have built in equalization in an attempt to make poorer source sound better. No matter. The rule is "garbage in, garbage out".

A better sound system will only serve to expose the flaws of the source material.

 

I rode in a 2018 the other day, and didn't find the B&O to have any noticeable difference than the Sony in my 2017. Now the B&O that came in my BMW X6 is amazing!

 

I was unable to tell the difference between the B&O and the sony, I have them both. Best way to describe them is "good enough".

 

I ordered an 18 just before the '19 order guide came out...
I was anxious over the B&O system and the fact that Fordpass were on the 19s....
With the B&O in the same boat as the Sony, I don't feel so bad...

 

 

 

I've heard the Alpine in the Dodges. Pretty decent. Like I say, I had 4 08 F350s and the Audiophile system sounded really good.

 

 

For what it's worth, Harmon Kardon had the exclusive rights for the Harley Davidson stereo head units and they sucked a big one.

 

You're absolutely right on that one!