Altec Lansing M812 Octiv Air Wireless Speaker System with Dock for iPod (Black)

Other products by Altec Lansing

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 7 x 21.3 x 13 inches ; 14.9 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 15 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B000R6QAHY
• Item model number: M812
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

The Altec Lansing M812 Octiv AIR is a next-generation wireless speaker system that lets you step up to the way digital music is enjoyed today with great versatility of use. For your iPod, the Octiv AIR delivers 80 watts of powerful high-fidelity sound, without wires and in a convenient, clutter-free package. And with the included Octiv Air remote, you'll have fingertip control of your music from anywhere in the room.

The advanced Octiv Air remote lets you control your music from across the room. View larger

You can place the speaker up to 100 feet away from the dock. View larger

Brilliant Sound from your iPod Throughout Your Home
At the heart of the Octiv Air is a transmitter dock that transmits the music from your iPod wirelessly to the system's powerful 80 watt speaker. You can place the dock wherever it’s most convenient, and experience your music in full, brilliant sound wherever you'd like. By using a 2.4 GHz wireless link, the system delivers high-quality static-free transmission through walls and ceilings up to 100 feet away, for best-in-class sound quality.

In addition to the music on your iPod, the Octiv Air can also send FM radio, music from your CD collection, or even satellite radio throughout your home, thanks to the dock's integrated FM tuner and auxiliary input. The included remote will give you convenient, fingertip control of your iPod, FM radio, and speaker functions. And for greater convenience, the transmitter dock will simultaneously charge your iPod while you listen to it.

The bass and treble are entirely user-adjustable so the Octiv AIR lets you control your ideal sound equilization.

Note: The Octiv Air is compatible with the iPod touch (1st and 2nd generation), iPod classic, iPod with video, iPod nano (all generations), iPod with color display, iPod mini, and iPod with click wheel.

Customized Stereo Sound for Each Room
With the Octiv Air, you have the choice of exactly how your music is delivered. If you want to focus your music in a large, entertainment room, you can add a second speaker and choose the system's "left/right" mode, which will separate your sound into two channels, effectively doubling your power.

To truly revolutionize your sound experience, the system gives you the option of adding up to seven additional speakers throughout different rooms in your home, so you will never be away from your music.

Powerful, Full-Spectrum Sound
The Octiv Air uses digital amplification to deliver crystal-clear sound up to 80 Watts RMS, enough power to fill a large room with sound. The speaker also features unique bass-enhancement technology that creates deep bass without a subwoofer.

Overall sound quality is outstanding, thanks to a two-way design with dual 4-inch speakers and 1-inch tweeters that deliver clean treble and deep bass. The Octiv Air has a system response from 42Hz to 22kHz.

You can easily mount the speaker either on the wall with the optional wall-bracket, or place it on a shelf or desktop. The Octiv AIR is so precisely tuned that it uses its surrounding environment to kick-up the omni-directional bass frequencies. A switch on the speaker itself allows you to set the ideal bass EQ, optimized no matter where you place the system.

The Altec Lansing M812 Octiv Air speaker measures 17.5 x 10.75 x 5 inches and weighs 11.9 pounds. It is backed by a one-year warranty.

What's in the Box
Transmitter base with dock, dock adapters, speaker, FM Antenna, remote control (batteries included), power cord, power adapter, stereo cable, users guide and quick reference guide.

The Octiv Air can fill a large room with crystal clear sound wirelessly.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding! Slight Problem With iPhone 3G., March 23, 2009

By	P. Colin McGraw "AV, Computer & EnviroTech Nut" (Castle Rock, CO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When it comes to playing your iTunes music in a room away from the computer, products tend to take two main approaches. The first approach streams music from your computer to speakers of your choice. Apple Airport Express or the Sonos System are an example. The second approach involves docking iPods directly to an integrated set of speakers. The Octiv Air essentially takes the "dock" approach, but provides an aux port, so it also supports the "computer streaming" approach when paired with the above products. Thus, the Octiv Air operates in a very impressive, unique way!

Better yet, instead of the dock being physically attached to the speaker system, the dock is separate and wirelessly streams your iPod or "computer streamer"'s sound to the speaker, which can be placed elsewhere. For me, that feature makes the system brilliant!

My wife likes to listen to her iPod in the kitchen, but the problem with other iPod docking products is that our counter space is too valuable to fit a big speaker. Now, we can set the iPod in a small, out-of-the-way dock on the kitchen counter, but stream the music to the speaker, which sits elsewhere!

Another plus is that the wireless dock supports any sound output from your iPod. This means that in addition to the music on the iPod hard drive, you can also use the Octiv Air for Pandora internet radio and any other music supported by iPod Touch/iPhone applications!

As for the sound quality, it's excellent! It's much crisper than the docking products I've used in the past, and rivals any high-end docking system I've heard.

My only complaints are trivial. First, while the product description says the wall-mounting bracket is "optional", what it SHOULD say is that it's "sold separately". Second, while the system works with iPhone 3G, docking it will result in your iPhone giving you a message saying "this accessory is not designed to work with iPhone". You can just close the warning and everything will work as normal, but be prepared for the annoyance if you want to dock your phone.

All in all, I think Altec Lansing has thrown together a FANTASTIC product, that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend if you're in the market for a high-end iPod speaker system!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Started fantastic!!!!!!! now.....not so good. See update, March 26, 2009

By	A. Boston (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

UPDATE Aug 09: We used this ipod dock often in our living room. It never moved, or got mishandled. There were no power-outages or surges(that I'm aware of). One day I went to use it and the speaker part was MIA. Couldn't get it to turn out, despite the little dock part showing as powered. I left it till I had time to examine. I just spent over an hour with the dock and the manual, and now even though I have power to both, the speaker screen either freezes(have to unplug), or just gives a spurt of music and then powers down. I tried to change RF channels, did everything the manual suggests. I am too mad to speak with an altec tech on the phone right now, so I went to their website to just shoot over an inquiry email to start. Guess what, there isn't a customer support email. You can ask general questions that go up on their site, but thats it. So it's call, or nothing. And while I appreciate being able to get a person on the phone, sometimes you just want to send an email, ya know? I will update as this problem progresses.


ORIGINAL REVIEW: You know how sometimes you're sitting there listening to something, and you're enjoying it to such the extreme that you want to hear absolutely everything right this minute and just can't choose? These speakers did that for me. I could sit here for hours just listening.

First thing out of the box I noticed - wow is this sucker heavy! The speakers probably weigh around 14-15 pounds alone. A bit bigger than I expected as well. But of course, don't let that deter you. The bigger, heavier speaker produces amazing quality sound.

I was hoping to mount this on my kitchen wall - free up counter space and clutter! But unfortunately, the mount is sold separately. Plus I'm in a rental, and thinking about it, putting something of this weight on the wall makes me nervous.

I eagerly got this out of the box and set up, as we're a house full of iPod dock lovers. I listen to everything. Sometimes when I'm working I like classical, but I'm also a huge fan of hip-hop and a secret lover of indie -- I try to make my indie friends feel bad for thinking their music is superior to everyone elses's, therefore, indie sucks! Right? Yes, I'm one of the "anything but country" people. The sound of this dock surpasses anything I've ever had before. Real quality, hearty sound. I'm hearing things in my favorite songs that I've never heard before. Realizing they might be more musically complicated then I had imagined. I love that the bass/treble adjustments are on the remote. I sometimes like to adjust for the song, and this lets me do that. These speakers really differentiate each instrument, I'm a little shocked by how good it is.

I only wish it had AM radio and more control over the ipod with the clicker to switch playlists etc. Also for those with a cordless phone. There is interference on the phone(not the speakers) if you use a 2.4 GHz phone, as this is on the same frequency. But guess what, I love it so much, I'll get a different phone!

As a final testament: If I had the cash, I would give this to any friend or relative as a gift. Absolutely top notch. Having some friends in the music business, I would not shy away from giving this to them and that says a lot because they can be VERY picky about their sound quality.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW! Impressive Quality. Beats Bose!, March 31, 2009

By	Kaio (Santa Monica, CA) - See all my reviews

I'm extremely impressed with the Altec Lansing Octiv Air! I had a similar Bose dock a while back but returned it because it was just too overpriced for what it was. And I'm glad I did because this one's awesome!

First off, this is a top quality wireless speaker system. The sound is crisp and clear, the wireless technology flawless and the design impeccable. From my experience, some iPod docks are all about catering to a popular product and deliver little else. But with the Octiv Air, form follows function from a product that delivers top quality sound via a stylish unit.

I've had wireless systems before that were problematic. Signal interference, poor wireless connection, what have you. As a result, I'm of the mindset that wired connections are always better than wireless, be it speakers, network connections or anything that requires sustained quality signals. But I have to say, I was quite impressed with the Octiv Air's ability to maintain a solid signal. I put it to the test and moved the base and speakers to extreme ends of the house and the signal was flawless. You'd never know the music was being transmitted via wireless connection. Add to that 80 watts of power and we're talking about a high end, high powered system that really delivers!

The unit also comes with a remote control and the manual says it's programmable to operate an external CD player that can be connected via the dock's auxiliary input. I haven't tried that myself but nice to know it can accommodate. And speaking of the dock, it's quite sleek and unobtrusive allowing you to place it just about anywhere yet still connect wirelessly to the speakers themselves. I think this has a 100ft range so that should be plenty for most anyone. I even tested it through walls too and it worked perfectly. That's 2.4ghz wireless signal for ya!

Right now, I have the dock by my computer and the speakers in the next room. My desk is cluttered so I appreciate having a small dock no bigger than most charging stations. The best thing about this configuration is that I can now play Pandora Radio wirelessly in my bedroom!!! I've really come to love Pandora and have a player built into my Blu Ray player, allowing me to listen via my Home Theater system. But I've been wishing I could listen in my bedroom and have been procrastinating over running speaker wires under the house in order to connect to the auxiliary output on my Home Theater system. But Altec Lansing Octiv Air solved that problem for me!! Now I can listen via computer connection and wireless speakers in my bedroom!!! Awesome!!! For me, this alone makes this product worth while. I love Pandora and really appreciate finally having a wireless speaker option!! Especially since the speakers are so good!!!

The speaker unit itself is wall mountable. It is quite heavy, likely due to the powerful speaker magnets inside. But I doubt I'll ever mount it on the wall given that we live in earthquake country! I have mine on a bookshelf and like the stylish look right where it is.

The speaker unit also has an FM tuner so you can listen to the radio too. But between an iPod and the infinite music options on the internet, I've already got more options than I'll ever need. But it's still nice to know FM is there if I ever want a weather report.

I'm really picky about speakers and I have to say, I'm quite impressed by the Altec Lansing Octiv Air. This is a high end product and you won't be disappointed!

Go for it!!