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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

While it's true the USB-C spec provides for this possibility as part of the extensions to the USB Audio standard, Intel is also discussing an MPU specifically to implement HDCP for audio outputs from the USB-C connector in this announcement. You say we didn't read it, but we read it loud and clear. This is an enabler for DRM that does nothing to help consumers, many of whom have already significantly invested time and money into audio gear that works perfectly fine.

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You can't DRM standard analog output (and still be compatible with normal analog headphones), which is why I mentioned the DRM concern.

Most of your current digital audio output ports already support DRM. S/PDIF, HDMI, DisplayPort, etc. all support DRM for digital audio.

You're making the big assumption these devices will always support analog audio output over USB-C. There's nothing preventing that from being disabled, and the digital output can definitely be forced to DRM only. We're already seeing this with things like the Lightning connectors on iPhones vs the old Dock connector that had analog and digital signals unimpeded, now with Lightning it requires an MFi certified device to decode the digital signal and no analog signal is provided at all.

The signal has to make its way to a speaker in analog form, eventually. In a way, analog output will always be supported.

But the conversion can be part of the headphone circuitry. I'm betting that's what Intel is thinking here.

In that case, it'd be simple enough to snip the wires to the transducers and take the analog signal from there. Even if there is wonky EQ for the specific transducers in use, it'd be simple enough to do a frequency sweep to figure out the filtering needed to undo it.

I respect and appreciate the hacker spirit that lets us understand that we can always work around things like DRM, but I'd prefer to fight it up front rather than deal with it later. There's MILLIONS of devices that currently work with 3.5mm stereo jacks around the world. Just because we can bypass the DRM in some way, it is unfair to the population at large to make this change when it incurs no real benefit just to satisfy the DRM desires of content producers.

In order to do that, you first have to buy a pair of the (likely expensive) DRM-enabled headphones, then destroy them and solder to the annoyingly hard-to-solder wires inside. Ultimately, this isn't going to stop piracy so much as it is people buying headphones that Intel haven't approved and charged a per-unit licensing fee on - it's about making sure they get their cut. It's probably a win-win for Intel and the headphone manufacturers too; Intel get to take a cut and the headphone manufacturers get to charge a premium to consumers, safe from competition from $3 earbuds from China (which are actually pretty good these days).

Until that is made illegal and you go to jail because you modified your device with the intention to circumvent content protections you agreed with when you bought the device.

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