Digital Trends

Size, memory and live XM listening make Inno far superior to its predecessor the AirWare. It truly is a portable music player. Once you memorize which button does what, it’s easy to operate, get to your favorite stations easily and toggle between stored and live music. I would like to see a cable box-like Last button to take you to the previous channel. You can forget where you were with so many stations to flip through, and if you hit a channel-change button by mistake you may not find your way back.

Overall the sound quality was very good. I ditched the earbuds as I do with any MP3 player and used my comfy Etymotic ER-6 buds instead. Being able to sit on a sofa in New York City and listen to any of 170 channels of programming is really fun. I could have scrolled around for hours and never gotten bored. I just wish there were more terrestrial repeaters to ensure a steady signal from anywhere. Escaping inside a pristine XM Café or Real Jazz signal while I’m walking through Times Square is my idea of a great Broadway musical.

Recording is easy. Press and hold the XM button and you’re recording the current song. From the recording menu, you can select current music or a scheduled recording. I wish the clock radios in hotels around the country were as easy to set as the timer on the Inno. You want to be sure you have a solid signal, though. I tried using the terrestrial signal and nothing recorded even though I was able to tune into music. So I did what the manual prescribed and connected Inno to its cradle and to the external antenna (two of the pieces and parts that are sure to get lost if I take the ensemble from the house).

When I followed the rules, so did the music. Inno not only changed the channel to Top Tracks at the scheduled time, but delivered Clapton, Jackson Browne and Led Zeppelin to the library. Even better, when I turned my head sideways to read the text on Inno in its sideways orientation on the cradle, the display switched to landscape mode to accommodate my view. Nice touch.

For all its recording prowess, Inno is high-maintenance. For XM addicts, it might not be a challenge to keep Inno plugged in and bringing in a live signal for the 8 hours a month required to maintain active status--and hold on to your recordings. After all, if you’re shelling out $13 a month for XM service, you do want to get your money’s worth. And those 8 hours can be spread out over multiple sessions so that makes the requirement more reasonable.

But I found out what happens when you don’t reach the 8-hour minimum in a one-month period. All the music I had recorded from XM vanished. That’s quite a punishment for missing a few hours of connection. If you have an annual subscription to XM and miss a month while traveling abroad or dealing with medical issues, should you be stripped of your stored content? I say no.

This isn’t just an XM issue. It’s the way many subscription-based digital music services operate. I guess XM and Napster’s response would be that any song you want to own you can buy from Napster and download to your PC and the Inno. Those won’t disappear. But the digital music world sure feels a lot like Big Brother.

I loaded the XM+Napster software according to instructions, but Napster seemed to recognize me from a previous version on my PC and told me Inno wasn’t compatible with my Napster to Go service. I didn’t want to delete the songs in my Napster library so I went into Windows Media and synched tunes from there. That route worked fine and my Martin Sexton library of tunes loaded in no time, filing in between Led Zeppelin and Top Tracks. I like that WMA and XM tunes can play together well in the same music list.