[sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?

[Didrik Madheden]

> the one guy bootlegging people in his massive factory complex in China

To me, that sounds very much like a company that starts with Beh and
ends with ringer? Who else could it be?

I'll mirror John's question. How would this even be possible, on a
technical level? Even if the consortium of "good guys" decide to
exclude the "bad guy" what could you do to detect the "bad guy's"
product in a rack? If this a whitelist, where somehow only allowed
modules are allowed to interact, this would essentially not be an open
standard because a newcomer couldn't enter without first getting
approved by the "consortium". If this is a blacklist, it seems like
the "bad guy" could easily change their id, cryptographic signature,
whatever makes it detectable, using a firmware update. And that's
before getting into the technical details of how to even implement
such a control. Is this some kind of bus (like CANBUS, RS485 or
whatever) where devices broadcast their presence using a manufacturer
id? Something like MIDI over patch wires? For example, the
hypothetical cryptographic challenge over an analog cable would make
this incompatible with every existing analog module, which would be a
detriment to everyone. (Or more likely a detriment to devices
requiring the signature since they would be practically unusable in a
rack so nobody would buy such modules.) And conversely, if anything
without such a cryptographic signature is allowed for backward
compatibility, the "bad guy" would have a compatibility mode which
doesn't negotiate the signature so it's exempt.

I don't see how this lock would work to its intended effect without
also being a massive hassle to both users and manufacturers. So I
don't see how this idea would ever be a workable prospect in practice.

/Didrik

On Wed, 9 Sept 2026 at 19:37, cheater cheater via Synth-diy
<synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
>
> Hi John,
> Good questions, and they're the kind of questions that I would be
> asking as well in this situation.
>
> My reason for starting this thread is mostly about the practical
> technical methods of implementing a lockout, rather than the (still
> completely valid) business and marketing related questions you ask,
> but let me try to answer them real quick.
>
> So, there's good news and bad news. The bad news is that I can't go
> into specifics, but there are good reasons to expect a new modular
> format showing up sometime in the not extremely distant future.
>
> That said, even without revealing anything, I can tell you that in my
> life there have been about ~10 viable, lasting, new physical formats
> for audio gear and interconnections, and of those, about 5 remain
> currently: Eurorack, API 500, 1U modules, 19"/2 audio processor racks,
> usb c, and the various networked audio systems. People thought dotcom
> and fracrack were going to stay here forever and scoffed at Eurorack
> as being cheap garbage (on this list too) that will never become
> popular and is only used by idiots.
>
> Regarding enforcing things in an analog interconnect format, that's
> not too much trouble, you can encode data over analog pretty easily,
> and a cryptographic challenge can take mere milliseconds to negotiate.
>
> Regarding "you can just replace it" - sure, but at some point if the
> lockout is built-in well enough, then it becomes uneconomical to
> modify things. How many people do you see modifying existing potted
> circuits, like in the Yamaha and ARP synths? Etc. Even if it's just a
> DIP, somewhere on the PCB, for almost all people it's going to be too
> much work to be worth it, they'd rather just buy the thing and support
> their favorite non-soulless companies. Piracy is a service problem,
> not a pricing problem.
>
> I don't know what you mean by lock-and-key. Do you mean a
> cryptographic handshake? But, like I said, there's certainly going to
> be a new format in the foreseeable future, so "disadvantage compared
> to the other guy" doesn't exist if the whole format contains this
> restriction. At this point there also isn't "pre-lockout" gear.
> Whoever proposes a new format, it's an interesting consideration on
> whether it's possible to lock it down so that _this one_ doesn't get
> smothered by unscrupulous mass manufacturers.
>
> On Wed, Sep 9, 2026 at 7:01 PM John <commodorejohn at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 9 Sep 2026 17:54:27 +0200
> > cheater cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm a huge opponent of lockout chips and DRM measures in all sorts of
> > > hardware, and essentially I hate it everywhere, but I believe in the
> > > case of tiny audio and synth manufacturers, one manufacturer in China
> > > is acting in a manner that simply does not let small businesses exist
> > > for the most part. One way of getting rid of this sort of behavior is
> > > to create an alliance of manufacturers where the modules check each
> > > other and exclude the one guy bootlegging people in his massive
> > > factory complex in China.
> >
> > There's not much in the way of specifics here, so it's difficult to
> > say, but on the whole I can't see how it'd help. If you're working with
> > DSP synths, the hardware is pretty fungible since it's only a platform
> > for running the algorithms; if you're working with analog, I can't see
> > how you even *would* implement any kind of "lockout" on the actual
> > synth circuits - and any digital hardware is just a means to control
> > those, which could be subbed for by anything that can run a program and
> > drive a DAC.
> >
> > Or are you suggesting that a modular *standard* be fitted with a lock-
> > and-key system? Then you're shooting yourself in the foot, since your
> > stuff won't work with everything while his stuff is free to do so -
> > which puts you at a *disadvantage* compared to the other guy.
> >
> > And how do you propose to differentiate non-conforming pre-lockout gear
> > from "unauthorized" post-lockout stuff? Or are you under the impression
> > that "here's an incompatible standard we created solely to keep people
> > we don't like out of the treehouse, everyone re-buy all your existing
> > gear in the new format plzkthx" is anything but a laughable non-starter?
>
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