Here's an owner's perspective. I bought an '06 Grandee with SpAudio II a couple of months ago. I didn't even know about the new version when I ordered the tub, but that's what it came with. The dealer said I was their first installation of the new system.
The external speakers are black and fairly large, and come with angled mounting brackets that can make the speaker face whichever way you want. My tub is half under a second floor deck, and I had them mounted on the deck floor beams slightly behind the tub, pointed towards the center and about 7ft high. I'll be happy to take a picture if anyone wants to see what that looks like. The installers did a very good job burying the cables and bringing them up to the speakers through pillars so that they're hardly noticeable. There are no markings on the speakers indicating brand.
The CD player is a sony marine grade stereo, seems fairly high-end, can play MP3-encoded CDs and is XM satellite-ready - which I take to mean that you can add an XM module which you can then control through the stereo's head end. The unit is mounted at the front-left corner of the tub, and pops out by pushing the cover door in, just enough to reveal the face of the stereo. It looks solid and well-integrated. The face of the unit comes off, and I tend to take it off when I'm not at the house for more than a day as a security measure, since the stereo door doesn't lock.
The internal speakers do a pretty good job filling the spa with sound, and if you pay attention you can locate where the sound comes from, but there's no "bad" spots in the hot tub where one speaker overwhelms the other. I usually keep just the internal speakers on when I don't want to disturb the neighbors, and the sound remains fairly localized with moderate volumes so that I'm comfortable playing the stereo with just internal speakers even late at night. The bass is booming and well defined, but the high frequencies are muffled. You really can feel the sound vibrating on your body.
The external speakers sound surprisingly good, and are much louder than the internal ones. To keep them balanced, I usually set the internal volume to 8-12 and the external volume to 2-4. They add a lot to the sound clarity, especially at high frequencies. As mentioned before, the equalization as well as the volume can be set independently for the external and internal speakers (there are 5 preset eq settings for each).
The dealer did not charge me extra for the II than what they originally wrote on the invoice for Spaudio I, which was $1625. To be honest, knowing what I know now (and I hadn't listened to either SpAudio before ordering), I would have been disappointed with SpAudio I, but love the II. The external speakers are a very good addition, and make the price of the system more palatable.
This is my first post here and the Grandee is my first tub, which I'm enjoying immensely! I'll be glad to provide any additional information.
