Karaoke Forums

Not sure if this is the right forum, but don't really think it matters.

I'm starting my first gig after the new year. Of the many purchases I have made to get prepared, I ordered twenty-five older Sound Choice discs on-line.  When they arrived earlier, I notice several CD's had "Parental Warnings" on the labels regarding lyrics.  I began to play some of those CD's to see for myself what that was all about (the place I'm starting at is a family friendly coffee house).

And then, if the first warning label didn't cause enough concern for me, I noticed a sticker on the cellophane wrapping of one of the crystal cases that read: "This Disc Copy Protected! Will Not Play On PC's Or DVD's"

Now I'm getting even more concerned. I intend to play the discs at my show off of a laptop using an external CD-Rom drive.  Sure enough, the first disc I open will not play.  Then I found a second wrapper with the same warning.  That CD I did not open. Then I opened and checked out all of the other CD's.  One more didn't play on my laptop, although it had no warning label.  So out of 25 discs I can't use 3 at my show without taking a Karaoke machine along.  

This raises many questions regarding digital shows, particularly if Sound Choice (and others) do this to all of their products.  Then there are questions related to the future backing up of ones collection.

I've e-mailed the vendor regarding what he intends to do about the situation.  I don't think he has any obligation to replace them for me?  I just purchased the new Sam Cook cd a couple of months ago and it wasn't protected, yet these older discs are.

Is this news, or have just been in the dark?

Ask the question of Sound Choice on their site.   They have a replacement policy.

They wanted to use copy protection on their discs - MediaCloq.  What are the numbers of the discs in question?  They were originally on 35 discs in the 8700 series.  They supposedly quit using MediaCloq since it was basically cracked in the first couple months & will replace the discs - provided you pay the $5.95 replacement fee - actually that's the shipping cost - per disc, that is provided they are still discs in active production, if not, you may be out of luck.

As far as backing them up, there are programs that will do it provided you have a good reader capable of cdg such as Plextor.

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Correct you are Lonman.  The numbers are 8708, 8714 and 8728

Now, if they won't play on the CD drive, how can they be copied on a Plextor or any other drive?  I just tried and couldn't do that!

And if I want the three replaced SC wants $18.00?

Right now they are worth nothing.

Tricerasoft will copy those into a useable format.  It may take awhile, I had one disc take almost 4 hours to copy to an uncompressed wav+g file, but it worked fine.  Once it's in that format, you can burn it back to disc then you have a workable cd format to backup.

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Since this is an "old" issue, I'm sure there's nothing I can accomplish by getting steamed over it with the vendor.  I'll should be happy that it is only three disks out of 25, rather than all 25.  So far, I haven't heard back from the vendor.

Getting back to the problem that got me looking at the labels in the first place - LYRICS ADVISORY.  The couple of lyrics I checked, before the Copy Protection problem arose, weren't problematic to me.

And why do the seem to call problematic lyric "Radio Version".  You would think they couldn't play the raunchy lyrics on the radio?
Do I need to review ever lyric that has the *?

Call SoundChoice, and tell them that the discs won't play in your cdg player, which is your computer. They DO have a disc replacement policy.

I have several mediacloq discs as well...

Not sure if it was mediacloq protection, but I had a few SC disc that I could not auto-RIP with CDRWIN.  They were multisession discs, but wasn't sure if it had a screwed up TOC.  

TO rip them I had to manually enter in the start and end values of each track for CDRWIN to rip the tracks.  It had no problem ripping them to a bin files after that.

I did a GOOGLE search and it seems that CDRWIN is able to rip mediacloq discs.  It allso seems that AUDIOGRABBER may be able to rip them too.  Audiograbber is freeware, give it a try first.

Don't buy from that vender if that's the discs they want to sell.   There are others that aren't selling the cloqed ones.     Maybe that's why they were a "Good" deal.

Wrong...

Audiograbber nor CDRWIN can rip mediacloq unless you defeat the code that makes the track jump from the inner circle to the outer and  back again.

Mediacloq was defeated by a 12 year old from the Phillipines, I think... dragged a magic marker across the outer track, defeating the code. that's the ONLY way you can copy that particular protection.

This is totally different than the multi-session discs that SC puts out. CDRWIN can copy them according to the first and last track info, or go to Audiograbber which ignores the datatrack...

Sound Choice will replace your Mediacloq discs only IF they have been re-released without Mediacloq.  There are some discs which Sound Choice has no plans to have another batch made, so these are NOT replaceable.  Contact Sound Choice to find out if they will replace your specific disc.  

Although Sound Choice used Mediacloq on about 35 discs in the 8700 series they also released SOME of their earlier discs with Mediacloq as well.  I've actually seen Mediacloq used on a newer release of SC8192.

Well again, I know Tricerasoft will rip the MediaCloq disc successfully, I have done several.  But again, some of them did happen to take a little while, one up to 4 hours to complete - but it worked fine.

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I will check with SC and see if the discs are available without copy protection. If they are available, I'll investigate whether SC will make an accomodation for the 3 copy protected discs I have.  If they are not available or too expensive to obtain, I will then try some of the suggestions herein.

The irony is that I not only can't copy those discs, they can't be played on the computer either.  Fortunately, we plan to have a deck along as a second drive (if we have got to deal with several discs at the same time) or, worse case, as a backup if we encounter a computer problem!

Although I still haven't heard back from the vendor, there is nothing disparaging about him that I am prepared to say at this time.  I want to first determine if the same product is available without copy protection and what the vendor recommends I do, regardless.  Frankly, I don't think I am going to hear back from him in this matter, and as I stated, I'm happy that only three out of 25 discs being protected.

However, if I don't hear back I will let you all know who the vendor is.

Lastly, do all of the suggestions offered to overcome the problme require, as Lonman's suggestion does, 4 hours per disc to accomplish?

MTU's Microstudio can handle this format as well.  Need to import tracks individually (leaving off any last "extra" track).  It can take a long time too.  This also occurs on some CB discs.

Sound Choice told me they never re-manufactured the disks in question.  In fact, they have been discontinued.  

Both Tricerasoft and MTU cost money, right?  Is there anyway to succesfully copy these discs with Nero or CDRWin or Clone CD?

CDClone MAY work, I don't remember, but it will copy any 'copy protection' that is incorporated as well.

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So, Loman, what you're saying is I can copy the protected CD's and end up with another protected cd?  Isn't that against the whole objective of the copy protection?

I assume, then, that both copies will play on a karaoke machine but neither will play on a computer?

IF it worked, yes you would have a copy of the copy protected disc.  

Yes neither would play on the computer.  The only programs I know that will work are Tricerasoft & yes it costs money.  I've hear that the MicroStudio will do it as well, but I haven't tried that one yet & yes it costs money.

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