The speakers prob were decent. A few of mine were blown really bad from previous owner. Spent $100 on new speakers and sound great

 

Ended up returning the AVHx2800 and trying the AVHX 3800.

The HD radio on the 3800 sounds good. Ill keep this one. When its in analog, it still sucks.

Im betting the stereo separation on the new pioneers is 25 db, when a good one is 40-45 db. As they have become computers basically, they are waay inferior sound quality to the car stereos of yesteryear. My phone....sounds better. and its a cheap phone. they just outsourced this stuff to some mfg and that is why they dont list any FM separation specs, its not worth listing. Note that kenwood, jvc, jensens, etc DO. Those too young to know the differences...well you never will.

 

Witch radio was your stock? Did you have the premium sound system.

 

Stock was lariat , and tuner and cd sound great, even thru stock speakers. Better fidelity and separation. But ill live with the new one for all the conveniences of spotify, pandora, hd fm, bluetooth, rear camera, usb, micrphone and hands free calling, etc.

I get in truck and spotify starts playing with phone still in my pocket.

 

Wait, heat sink? Which stock stereo do you have? Do you have the ford amp? If so, did the new head unit power the amp? I have seen that before.

 

No amp, id say the hu has 20 watts/channel or so. Top half of the rear is a heavy finned heat sink. And it sounds really good. Has better high end and overall sound than my new pioneer.

 

I still have my stock head unit in my truck but I installed a line in- line out converter and hooked up a single 12 it bumps lol

 

Personally Id stay away from Pioneer and go with Sony, Kenwood or Alpine. Im currently fighting my Pioneer AVIC-D3 every day and cant wait to replace it.

I had to really mess with the settings a lot to get it to sound decent. OP, Id say you need to do the same. Dig really deep on the web to figure out the settings.

FWIW I have Alpine 5x7s in all doors and 2 10s under the back seat.