If you visit tiny house parties like us, chances are you would’ve witnessed the most occasions where guest take turns to hook up their iDevices to the speakers; if not, only picture yourself fighting your flatmates over your community HiFi system — Altec Lansing claims which upon average there are 2.2 portable audio inclination per household, and they’re many expected iPods. Naturally, the dual-docking speaker — which is zero new — would somewhat ease made at home tragedy as well as revoke interruption to the tunes, though think smarter: what if you could let music alternate between the devices, as well as carrying a capability to instantly change the amount of play time upon both persons’ song libraries? Better nonetheless, what if the speaker doubles up as an alarm clock? These have been pretty most what Altec’s charity with its $99.95 Octiv Duo (or Octiv 202 outside the US), with a little help from its two free iOS apps: Music Mix as well as Alarm Rock. You know the drill — review upon to find out whether this brand-new box would finish your small amicable predicament once as well as for all.Altec Lansing Octiv Duo speaker dock examination

Let’s proceed with a list of a box’s content. You won’t find most surprises here — there’s obviously the orator wharf, the disc-shaped remote carryout (powered by a CR2025 cell, if you contingency know), dock adapters for the iPhone 3G / 3GS as well as iPod hold, energy adapter, as well as 3 wall-plug adapters (for UK, US as well as Europe). Oddly, there’s no tray adapter for a iPhone 4, and in response to our censure you were told which Altec’s still operative with Apple to magnify the speaker’s official “compatibility”; for now, iPhone 4 users will only have to bear with a loose docking as well as be more careful. Boy, that concept iPod dock obvious could come in accessible right right away.

The easily built matte-black dock comes in a rather peculiar shape — apparently its resemblance of the flat horn loudspeaker helps revoke station waves inside a body; or in layman’s terms, the following audio suffers from reduction exaggeration. Sure enough, a orator sounds great to our humble ears — bass is surprisingly abounding since the size of a device, and three-way isn’t bad, either, nonetheless it can still go serve to move out cleaner guitar plucking as well as drum brushing. Mid-range seems to be where a orator needs most work, though as a sub-$100 orator wharf, it’s great sufficient for the demographic marketplace — we’d patently have to compensate the lot some-more for some audiophilic compensation.

Just above the twin 3-inch neodymium drivers distortion 3 orange LEDs for indicating a audio source (dock A, AUX, as well as dock B), accompanied by a usually four buttons that you’ll find on a wharf: power, source, volume down and volume up. There’s the whole garland some-more buttons — generally for menu control upon the iDevices — upon a magnetic IR remote carryout, that can be slapped onto a behind of a wharf or on a fridge. And eventually, the energy input, AUX input as well as the USB pier are located near a back. Don’t get too excited, yet, as the USB pier is simply for charging your other devices; it’s still a accessible feature, nevertheless.

What unequivocally sell this device have been a two aforementioned iOS apps. When you initial plug in an iOS device, you’ll be asked to check out the dock’s accompanying program in a App Store. Starting off with Music Mix: this is essentially a smarter brain of a dock, permitting a iOS device to allot a set volume of play time between a two docked devices. For instance, if you wish a fair mix of song in between you and your partner, simply leave the slider during the default core position where it indicates 50 percent for both sides, as well as hence, you’ll get rounded off 50:50 playback over at slightest 10 tracks. Well, we contend roughly, since it’s not just “ABABABABAB…”; but some-more like “AAABBABABB…”. If you feel that your collection deserves some-more courtesy, just quietly slip the club towards your device — just have certain your partner doesn’t find out. You’ll see the good demo of this shuffling action in the video above.

As utilitarian as it sounds, there’s actually not much else in the Music Mix app — on the first page you get the basic playback controls sans timeline for scrolling, whilst a second page shows you both inclination’ battery lives, and a third page lets you collect a single of a 3 audio sources for the speaker, as well as toggling “Stereo Widening” mode which didn’t sound particularly effective to our ears. What’s missing here is a ability to choose song inside of the app, so one would pretence that it’ll simply goon yes or no playback mode you were using in the iPod app (such as by playlist, by genre, by artist, etc.); but in fact, Music Mix simply shuffles your entire library on any device. You can design a embarrassing unfolding where a hip-hop celebration gets interrupted by your High School Musical pickup. Another complaint you detected later on is which when the worker device is personification song, quitting Music Mix on the master device would simply stop the song altogether, that means you can’t go into the iPod app to queue up your subsequent lane. Not certain if this would be an easy complaint to repair, but integrating a little arrange of music selector in Music Mix would be great sufficient for us.

The second app is called Alarm Rock (as featured on a Octiv Mini), as well as it does pretty much what it says upon a tin. Upon launching, you’re greeted by a elementary time interface with seven skins to choose from (our favorite a single is “Pop”), as well as after a little hands-on time we figured out that you could shift a screen lightness by swiping plumb anywhere on the shade — pretty accessible for bedside use. At a top-left corner of a home shade there’s a nap button for fading out music over a preferred period (30 minutes by default), which can be changed in a settings menu (accessible around the top-right info idol. Similarly, that’s a same menu for adding alarms or quickly toggling a 20-minute power nap warning. Now this is where things get luscious: you get to set your alarm tune using a default iOS alerts, or anything from your song library by particular marks, by albums, by artists, or by playlists. Yes, ironically, a built-in music selector that you wanted is here! That said, a selector can be slightly treacherous, as it doesn’t burst straight to a filter corresponding to what you tap upon in settings, but whatever you pick, it’ll still prove your initial search criteria, i.e. if you pick by artist, afterwards whatever strain you choose it’ll still name the artist instead of just which a single lane. If this is still as well puzzling, have a look at the walkthrough in the on top of video.

Wrap-up

We gotta say, it’s nice to see the lovely take upon iPod speakers — generally ones with dual docks — by means of iOS apps. Sure, Music Mix still needs some tweaking, though there’s no doubt that Altec Lansing will continue to gloss the software for the whilst. As for the orator itself, not usually is a setup quality top-notch, but its tune extravagant is also pretty good for its price as well as small footprint. We also praise Altec for solemnly throwing in a captivating remote carryout and a USB pier, conjunction of which can be found on even more expensive dual-dock speakers similar to Pioneer’s Duo series (from $349). Sounds similar to the really compelling option, if you ask us — at least until we save up enough cash for the span of electrostatic loudspeakers.

Via Engadget