Citroen Berlingo 2016 with Multimedia Stereo – sound problems

Sound problems with Citroen Berlingo 2016 with Multimedia touchscreen stereo

Who makes the Citroen Multimedia Stereo ?

This unit is manufactured by Magneti Marelli. This company is a well known sub-manufacturer for the car parts industry and supply Fiat, Chrysler, Citroen, Peugeot and many others.

Who makes the door speakers ?

These are built by a Polish company and a low price must have been the only requirement.

They are single cone and the magnet is very light.

What can be done to improve the sound ?

Replace the stereo

There are 2 issues with the Citroen stereo:

1. Terrible stereo
2. Poor speakers

To make the greatest improvement the stereo needs to be replaced. The audio performance of the factory unit a ghastly when compared to Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine, etc.

We did try a temporary replacement of the Citroen unit with a Pioneer X580DAB and the difference was massive. Even with the poor factory speakers the clarity and sound level was vastly improved. So, our first recommendation has to be to replace the stereo and junk the existing one.

Please note that you will lose some features that work through the existing unit – the parking sensor visualisation (if you have factory fitted reversing sensors), the MPG display.

Replace the speakers

The standard speakers can be replaced with aftermarket ones. This will help the sound quality but you won’t get over the issues with the original head unit.

To give a quality uplift start with speakers in the £ 50.00 to £ 70.00 range. Ones in the lower price end of the market do not improve it much more than the original speakers.

For a reasonably priced replacement would recommend the Alpine SPG 17C2 coaxial speaker (built -in tweeters). These give you much better performance than the factory speakers.

It is not worth going mad on the speaker quality as the limiting factor is the factory stereo.

There is also little / no sound deadening on the door panels. Adding some will help.