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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised the article didn't mention DRM, which is almost certainly one of the main reasons behind this push.

I'm not surprised, since PR material was probably the source of the information.

That doesn't make sense. If you're recording off the 3.5mm jack, then you can record the output of the external dac just as well. Moving the dac out of the phone doesn't make piracy harder.

DRM isn't about protection it's about inconvenience.

Think about a streaming service which would play songs but some songs could only be decoded using Beats or Skullcandy...

Or serves higher quality audio for specific manufacturers.

Yeah, I suppose that's possible, but it doesn't make sense for the artists, the publishers, or the streaming service, who make money by having people listen to their songs.

...No, they make money by people paying to listen to (or play) their songs.

Does it makes sense for an artist to make their music available to only one streaming service? Some would say no, and yet they still do it.

They already do this, they limit which streaming services have their content, and do time/exclusive releases for specific services. Apple bought Beats for the app and the user base, it's not impossible to already do promotion like some headphones give you 20$ worth of iTunes credit, now it's even easier get Beats and get access to additional exclusive content, or like some one else suggested better quality content. Seems like a good way of pushing people to pay 300$ for 30$ worth of hardware, or more precisely helping people to justify their purchase because their headphones can actually now sound better than even entry quality studio/recording headphones.

DRM can rarely be used as a protection against mass copying and pretty much never when you cannot control the analog output of the protected content, it's only real use it to restrict how lawfull consumers can access and use the content. External DAC's have existed for Android devices for quite a while (BT/USB DAC's), and even for iOS (you could connect a DAC to an iPhone/iPad since they switched to the Lighting cable). The streaming industry has almost hit a dead end with monetization, having a digital interface that can be controlled gives them a whole new avenue of value added services and while it's unlikely that they'll jump on it immediately I would bet my money on the likes of Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music capitalizing on this within the next 2 years.

The DAC will be hard wired into the headphones, there won't be a jack between the headphones and the DAC that you can plug into.

At the start, you'd need to modify headphones to be able to record the signal, but I doubt this will work in the long term. At some point it's highly likely the DACs will come with DRM so that only approved headphones work with a device.

This very much depends on the design of the headphones. Look at bluetooth headphones: there are models with a transciever built into the headphones, and separate transcievers where you can plug whatever headphones you want.

The same can be the case with type-C.

Nothing preventing someone from making a DAC with a 3.5mm jack instead of a set of headphones. In fact they already exist...

In a DRM scenario, there would be an audio equivalent to HDCP in place, so you'd need a piece of technology which it's illegal to clone and only available if you sign a restrictive licensing agreement.

Mind you, you'd still be able to cannibalise an existing set for this.

Given how "successful" HDCP has been, I'd give it a month or two of survivablity. And yeah, as you mentioned, anyone with basic electronics skills (or for that matter, could follow a youtube video) could simply mod their hardware to plug whatever they want in.

Unless the DAC is very tightly integrated into the actual speaker (literally fused, so it's hard to connect to the coil), there always will be an analog loophole.

DRM is not about preventing this, though. It's about making ordinary consumers surrender to whatever media dictates, not preventing absolutely everyone from ripping the content.

From an EE perspective headphone elements are merely small very low performance speakers.

The only "DRM" I can think of with USB-C is playing impedance games. So right now you could probably get away with soldering a 1K resistor and a RCA plug in place of the headphone element and you'll have a usable signal, but if they played weird impedance games you might need a simple opamp in there to adjust the levels to normal.

Something that's annoying today is to get line level audio out of the bluetooth connection to my car stereo I need to bypass a nanny warning about blowing my ears out, but only on my phone. Apparently "line level" on my BT adapter that makes my BT volume about the same as, say, the radio or CD, would, if connected to a BT earpiece or headphones, blow someones ears out. You can safely assume the people who screwed up something so incredibly simple as setting levels, will successfully find a way to screw up usb-C headphone levels. So one brand will nanny-state and prevent anything louder than a church whisper, others will sound different levels based on what device they connect to, it'll be the predictable epic fail.

Speaking of my nice bluetooth headphones with their couple hours of battery life, since buying them many years ago I haven't plugged headphones into my phone or tablet. They're nice enough headphones. I'm just surprised the marketing push is to keep shoving audio thru legacy wired cables instead of going full on bluetooth. I suppose there's a lot of money to be made in worn out headphone cables. When I'm not listening to music, but speech instead (audio books, podcasts, etc) I'll swap my bluetooth headphones for my bluetooth earpiece thingy.

> "The only "DRM" I can think of with USB-C is playing impedance games."

I didn't mean to imply DRM existed in USB-C today, what I was implying is that the move away from the 3.5mm jack to USB-C audio is at least partly driven by DRM (in the long run). It's like what happened with HDMI. HDMI is more or less DVI-D video + digital audio + DRM (HDCP). What was the point of adding in the DRM to HDMI? What risk was posed by unencrypted DVI video streams? In my opinion, similar arguments for adding DRM to HDMI will be given for adding DRM in future revisions of USB-C audio. Perhaps the phone manufacturers will also use the argument that dodgy USB-C cables can damage devices (due to the high power spec for USB-C). In any case, I'm fairly certain that those that seek to benefit from DRM will be looking to add it in.

Why do you assume that's why phone manufacturers would want to switch to Type-C for audio?

Phones are getting slimmer, and the 3.5mm jack is the single thickest component in the phone. Removing it makes sense from this perspective.

Now, sure, you theoretically could use USB-C for DRM, but until someone actually implements this, I'll apply Occam's razor.

Consider that iTunes and the like have been selling DRM-free music for years now. And that, even though Blu-ray players require HDCP DRM in order to play back video, they don't require it for audio.

Why do we need thinner phones? They aren't bricks right now.

Some people prefer thinner and lighter devices. Do we need them? No, but product decisions are not made based on needs alone.

I realize this is anecdotal, but I never hear[0] anyone say the iPhone needs to be thinner.

I hear it needs to lose the bezels.

I hear it needs a larger battery.

I never hear it needs to be thinner.

[0] Nor do I read about many people wanting it thinner.

I don't get it either. Thinner means lower structural integrity (remember "bendgate"), smaller batteries, and in this case lower functionality.

Phones are thin enough. Plus people buy these thin phones then slap thick $5 rubber covers on them, what is even the point anymore? If people really want a thin phone then ditch the accessories, they're thin already.

> "the 3.5mm jack is the single thickest component in the phone. Removing it makes sense from this perspective."

Here's the problem with that perspective...

1. The 3.5mm jack isn't the thickest part of modern smartphones. To give one example, the camera module tends to be thicker.

2. As far as I've seen pretty much nobody is looking for phones to get any slimmer, especially as slimmer phones = smaller batteries.

If you can find me any comments online from other people stating that the current top of the line smartphones are too thick, I'll be very surprised.

The first iPhone wasn't too thick either, but it doesn't stop phone manufacturers from aiming for ever-slimmer phones.

That does not address my points. Find examples of people that are unsatisfied with the thickness of current phones and you'll have a much stronger argument.

The 3.5mm jack is typically the only remaining unmediated "analog gap" on a phone.

Since there's no way of doing authentication signaling on it in a way that can be enforced without mutual cooperation, there's no way to limit access and/or monetize the audio experience any further than it is right now.

USB-C removes those obstacles. This only lives in the land of potentiality right now, but the path is pretty clear. Once you have accessories that can mutually authenticate, you can limit access in exchange for money. This is technically a "slippery slope" argument, but I think capitalism gives us ample evidence to show that it's neither an illogical nor improbable step.

The air gap will always exist, just a matter of the tools being ubiquitous enough for it to be worth the effort.

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