[sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?

[David Kantowitz]

Hi Cheater,

1. Accepting that there's a cost efficient way to build a kill switch into
every module (analog or digital) of the new format, I'm not following how a
technical solution fixes the business problem.

You build a walled garden; the unnamed competitor builds an unwalled
garden.  You're now engaged in a brand-on-brand commercial struggle with a
definitionally massively better funded competitor.  Against that backdrop,
the purchaser of the module must now decide: walled or unwalled.

How has your wall changed the decision inclinations of the purchaser?
Has the time & cost you've invested in building a wall increased your
brand's value by at least the walls total cost?

2. The technical part seems pretty simple.  The complexity of the scheme is
really just how much time & effort to put into building the lock.  As a
simple example, transmit & receive a high-frequency signal that encodes:
<nonce, encrypt(key, nonce)>.  The Mutable Instruments modules do something
like this to detect normalization.  Use one of those under 10c
microcontrollers to decode and send a kill signal to your power supply.
Eventually the key or PBC trace will be discovered by some cranky hacker
and published  (ex. DVD region codes), but you're relying mainly on the
inconvenience of circumventing.


-David K.


On Wed, Sep 9, 2026 at 11:34 AM Mike Bryant <mbryant at futurehorizons.com>
wrote:

> If you don't like the company you are obviously referring to, don't buy
> from them.  But lots of people do because they are cheaper and it's all
> they can afford.
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Synth-diy <synth-diy-bounces at synth-diy.org> on behalf of cheater
> cheater via Synth-diy <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
> *Sent:* 09 September 2026 18:31
> *To:* John <commodorejohn at gmail.com>
> *Cc:* synth-diy at synth-diy.org <synth-diy at synth-diy.org>
> *Subject:* Re: [sdiy] Lockout / DRM chips?
>
> 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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