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.