[PaulDrives]

I agree the charge for B&W is very steep, but overall I felt I'd negotiated a very good reduction on the vehicle's price so that helped justify the price to myself. Given I listen to a lot of music in my car, and enjoy good audio, it was an upgrade over the standard system that I definitely wanted.
The HK wasn't an option when I ordered my XC60 earlier this year, otherwise I would have considered it (my previous BMW had a good HK sound system, with the Logic7 surround sound being quite impressive playing 5.1 DVD audio).
Ideally it would be good to be able to test-drive each system one after the other and compare directly (NB I don't think testing when stationary much value - they all sound better without road noise, how well they cope with that is key).
I'm very impressed with the B&W system. On the right tracks the envelopment option sounds superb and has some great instrument placement around the car. My listening is typically FLAC files through USB, but the sound from Spotify on the "High" or "Extreme" quality setting is very good too.