KickStart

Welcome to KickStart. This section is set up to make your experience with DART XP Pro fun, quickly gratifying, and as painless as possible. First off, we realize that your chances of reading all help files ... no matter how cool ... are slim to none. That’s fine, but you may want to at least glance at this section, to get a quick heads-up on how the software works. It may help save some steps when you’re working with DART XP Pro and it will also save you from reading large chunks of the manual.

Instant gratification time!

If you want to try something that illustrates the power of DART XP Pro and helps you better understand its most powerful features, follow the steps below. For convenience, do not close the Help window until you reach the last step.

Step 1

Click on the OPEN button and choose mendel.wav - a short sample of the Mendelssohn's "Wedding march", which is provided with the software.

Step 2

Once mendel.wav has been loaded, click on the PLAY button. What you will hear is a very poor, noisy recording that sounds like an old record album, tape, or forest fire ... complete with more snaps, crackles, and pops than any breakfast cereal.

Step 3

Now we’ll have some fun! Click on DECLICK button. You will be prompted with a box that asks if you want to register the file. Click Yes. It will tell you, that the name of the registered file will be mendel00.wav and will ask if you want to change the name. Click No. You will then be given the option to copy the file or rename it. Choose Copy. You will see advantages of registering audio files very soon.

Step 4

Next you’ll see a dialog that explains all the pertinent information about your new file and allows you to type in some further details and comments. Click OK. Now you’ll get your first glimpse of the DeClick processor. DeClick Plus is a tool for elimination of impulsive disturbances, such as clicks, pops and record scratches.

Step 5

Disable frequency declicking (uncheck the Enable box) and click on Default to accept default program settings. Then click on Process. Now impulsive disturbances will be removed. The speed of this process depends upon the intensity of noise, the speed of your computer and the size of the wave file.

Step 6

Once DART XP Pro has finished processing your file, it will display a message window with some processing details. Close it by clicking OK. You will see two new file windows. The first of them, entitled mendel01.wav, contains a wave file with the results of declicking. The second window, entitled mendel01.det, contains a special binary detection file, which shows, in its upper part, which fragments of the original audio file were regarded as clicks/pops and replaced. Detection files can be modified, allowing you to influence the process of click removal - you can make the system accept some fragments of the material 'as are', and you can force it to reconstruct other fragments.

Step 7

Listen to the results of declicking - select mendel01.wav, by clicking on its title bar, and press the PLAY button. The obtained audio file is still very noisy but the clicks have gone! In a while you will be able to remove the record hiss, also. To get information about mendel01.wav, click on the INFO button. Note that all processing details, including the name of the source audio file, the renovation tool used and the applied settings, are listed in the middle part of the DART Info dialog - this shows clearly advantages of registering audio files.

Step 8

To remove record hiss, select mendel01.wav for processing, by clicking on the SOURCE button situated in the upper-left corner of the mendel01.wav window. The SOURCE button will turn red, when pressed .

Step 9

Click on DEHISS button and, accepting the default settings, click on Process to start dehissing.

Step 10

Once DART XP Pro has finished processing, it will display results in another file window, entitled mendel02.wav. Restoration of the Mendelssohn file is now complete. You can listen to mendel02.wav. What you should be hearing is a clean noise-free recording. To compare the final restoration results with the original recording, click on the SOURCE button in the mendel00.wav window and press the X keyboard key. This will start playback in the 'Play mix' mode, allowing you to switch between the source file (mendel00.wav) and destination file (mendel02.wav) played simultaneously. The system will switch between the two indicated audio files each time you press the TAB key.

Now you’ve gotten a taste of the power of this product. If you want more information, you will find it in the DART XP Pro Help files. To obtain a context-dependent advice on DART, e.g. to get information about a selected menu item or a dialog box, all you need to do is press the F1 keyboard key.