I don’t have much experience in high-end luxury cars but I have owned a spectrum of brands from European,domestic and Japanese manufacturers.
Honestly I have never been impressed by a factory system. The H/K in our older Mercedes was a joke. We all know Bose is a gimmick. I’ve heard the Fender systems are pretty good but I’ve never had the chance to demo them.
The best I think I’ve heard is the Logic 7 in BMW.
What are some of your favorites?
Like I said, there are certainly successful implementations and getting a name-brand stereo generally means you’re getting more power and more speakers than a base model, so a difference will be heard from that point of view. But HK in one car isn’t the same as HK in another… and that goes for all brands. So it’s silly to brand-chase in automotive.
Much like phone cameras, software is playing a bigger role these days in what we hear in these systems, and that’s a moving target when we’re talking the inside of a vehicle.