Singing the Praises Of Recordable CDs

By CRAIG CROSSMAN
Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

Adobe's PhotoShop is considered by most to be the program to use when it comes to editing photographic images. Since it can enhance, restore and modify, it's commonly used to repair badly damaged photos as well as altering and preserving new ones.

The DART CD-Recorder holds many analogies to PhotoShop, except that it's for sound instead of pictures.

Now that recordable CD (CD-R) drives and recordable media are affordable, it's easy to create your own CD-ROMs - but it's also possible to record audio compact discs.

What You Need

To do so, you need a program that can record an audio source that's input into the computer and then transfer it to the CD-R.

The DART CD-Recorder can capture and save music from compact discs, records, cassette tapes and even MIDI music files.

Say you have several favorite selections that reside on different CDs. Wouldn't it be nice to have them all on just one disk?

Insert each CD into the computer's CD-R drive and tell DART the music tracks you want to capture. (This process is called "ripping.")

Next, organize the tunes into playlists in any order.

From there, you can "burn" a single CD that contains the music selections you want in the order you want, and they'll play on any compact disc player.

But that's only the beginning.

DART stands for Digital Audio Restoration Technology. Just as PhotoShop has filters, DART has audio filters that can clean up the sound.

Chances are that some of your favorite records are scratched or your tapes are hissy. Using filters like DeHiss and DeClick, most or all of those clicks, pops, scratches and hiss distortions can be removed.

The results are simply amazing.

But there's more.

How many of you have those old 78 RPM records? Trying to find a 78 record player is up there with locating an 8-track tape player, only harder.

With DART, just hook up your current record player's output to the computer and play the 78 using the 33 speed. After DART records the music it will automatically adjust the file to play back at 78 while maintaining the original tempo and pitch! Nice.

Then use the DeHiss and DeClick filters to clean things up and you'll hear your old records sing like never before.

And just as PhotoShop can convert one image type to another, DART can make music CDs from any MP3 audio file, the popular Internet audio compression file format. And what's even more interesting is that DART can render MIDI files by using the sound card in your computer to produce audible .wav sound files.

From there, DART will convert it to standard music CD format and write it to the CD-R.

My other favorite DART feature is the Radio Recorder that lets you perform unattended recording as you would with a VCR.

Just tell DART the dates and times you wish to record an attached radio source and you'll never miss your favorite radio shows again.

DART CD-Recorder
DARTECH, Inc.
(800) 799-1692
www.dartpro.com
Requires: Win 95 or later
Price: $49 (professional version, DART Pro 98, sells for $399).