Altec Lansing Octiv AIR M812

You can't fault it for style. Altec Lansing's Octiv AIR wirelessspeaker system looks great on your wall or shelf, and because itssounds are beamed up to 100ft on the 2.4GHz wireless band, you don'thave to position the stereo speaker unit near the transmitter.

Aswell as an iPod dock, the transmitter unit also offers an FM radiotuner with six presets and an auxiliary input, so you can connect anyaudio device with a 3.5mm headphone socket. You can also add up toseven extra speakers to stream your sounds throughout the house.

Alternatively,you can buy two units and define one speaker set as 'left' and theother as 'right', separating your sound into two channels. It's easy toset up, despite the woeful instructions.

You just switch bothunits on and they connect automatically. The dock transmitter chargesany iPod that utilises a USB connection, and can broadcast music fromolder, FireWire-charged iPods without charging the device.

But it doesn't support the iPhone very well, forcing you to switch to Airplane Mode to listen to your tunes.

There'sno facility to connect the transmitter dock to your Mac via USB forsyncing, which is an opportunity missed, but you can broadcast fromiTunes through the very useful auxiliary port.

The audioquality offered by the Octiv AIR is extremely good, offering a rich,solid sound with plenty of character. Bass is prominent and deep, butnot at the expense of treble.

Indeed, both facets can beindependently adjusted from the supplied hand controller, so you canset the mix to suit your tastes.

Since both speakers are housedin the same unit, it struggles to define the shape of the sound, butthe detail is strong. And at 40 Watts per channel (or 80, if you use atwo-unit stereo setup), you're not short of volume either.

Altec'sOctiv AIR isn't cheap, but you're getting a high-quality system foryour money. It's equally at home wall-mounted or on a shelf or table,and the iPod dock transmitter takes up very little room.

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