This is Dan Ferici, Group Director of Content and Editorial, Industrial and Tech at Emerald. Here once again, working in close partnership with the HDBaseT Alliance at Infocomm 2026, doing thought leadership discussions and conversations with top industry suppliers, talking about key technology issues that they are seeing out in the wild today. And what we're going to talk about today is navigating the wild world of USB-C power delivery with Matt Krugman of Acroname, as well as Charley Jones from Sennheiser. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining me today. Really appreciate it.
Thank you for having us. Thanks, Dan.
So let's get right into it. USB-C is rapidly becoming a universal standard, but delivering high power and data safely across such a wide range of devices is genuinely complicated. I think that's true. What's driving that shift, and what does it take to get it right? Which is, of course, most important.
You want me to start? Sure. I know that from a Sennheiser standpoint, at the end of the day, for us, it's all about making the user experience simpler, easier, and less complicated. And USB, when it first came out, we all joked about plug and pray and things, but the truth of it is, the specification has really evolved over the years, where it truly is fairly ubiquitous and fairly easy to use, provided that you stay within the guidelines. And so that's where, honestly, I'm interested to hear from Matt a little bit on the guidelines side of things. How do you guys make sure that it's always so easy to use?
Well, first of all, you said it really well, and I think on that note of plug and play, how many times have we experienced the, "I'm going to plug in that type A connector," not once, not twice. But three times. But three times, and then it goes in. So I think, if you really back up to the USB-C question and how is it moving things forward, it actually is making our lives simpler. It's just something that is thoughtful now, learning from our lessons in the past, and really looking forward to what's possible today as well as tomorrow, and eliminate some of this waste that we're seeing in the world from electronics.
That is really important, and the electronic waste issue is very significant, so streamlining, slimming down makes a lot of sense.
Right. So you're asking about how do we guarantee it. I think, first and foremost, one of Acroname's strengths is doing a lot of development in power delivery, and USB-C, and test applications, and we're involved in USB IF, being involved in the standards. There's so much good literature and so much support from the community on how to do this well and how to do this thoughtfully. The worst thing I've seen peers do is just go for it. Ask around, ask good questions. We're all here to help. Yeah. And I think there's some really, really good and rich resources we can all learn from.
So let's talk a little bit about the challenges, but I want to frame it in a positive way. So USB-C power delivery has scaled all the way up to 240 watts now. Remarkable. Does create challenges. What would you say are the biggest headaches, excuse me, that those in the supplier community run into to try to keep pace with the standards we were just talking about? How should product managers, how should hardware engineers be approaching compliance, be approaching safety to keep on target, essentially, as the specs continue to evolve?
Yeah. For us, the blessing and curse of USB-C is that it is the same connector. And so unfortunately, there are some bad actors out there that are willing to sell you a cable, and they'll tell you it'll do whatever you want it to do. Yes. But the reality of it is that there are defined limitations of how far you can go with USB-C. So for Sennheiser, we do so much with microphones and placement in the room. Well, typically, where the microphone is and where the equipment is is not within the magic 10-meter range or one-meter spec, depending. But to the customer, that cable looks the same, so they're expecting the same experience. And so for us, this is where we really look at, one, quality suppliers, making sure that we're working with people whose products have been vetted and certified. And then two, because we are based in Germany, we of course have to make sure that we are in compliance with all of the European Union guidelines around things like power consumption and data safety. And so with that, that's where things like the 240 watts are fantastic because you can power your laptop. But, well, Matt, what happens if maybe that 240 watts is unleashed outside of the box?
I laugh because as the USB-C connector and now the customers start using it, it's really fun because you see some wild... Everyone's starting to use it. It's adopted. Well, there's belly button lint in the connector now, and that might not sound like a big deal, but protect the ports from a design point of view. I've seen countless things blow up—Yeah—because of electrical shorts caused by gunk in the connectors. So it's like part of us all can work together and be in awareness of saying, like, "This wasn't a problem before, but it is now."
So some of the things that customers or people can do, or even developers, is be aware of the standards. And it's not just on the shoulders of us creating new products. The European Union is helping push these things forward. Everyone knows about Apple and their charging connector, and they said, "Nope, we want type C. We want to simplify the world." And they did. And they moved a mountain. But now they're going one step further and saying, "Let's eliminate barrel connectors and power supplies, and use a power supply mandate." That was adopted and released in April of this year. So the world is really trying to work together to harmonize some of these things. And then Microsoft as well, I think they were here earlier today, and they're obviously pushing forward Windows hardware compatibility requirements, saying, "Let's simplify this for the customers and developers who have expectations this all work together." So just listening to the community and working to these standards will go a long way, and adding to the confusion of the gas station cable.
Be the rogue actor, right? No one wants to have that call from your mom at night saying, "My cable isn't working anymore." You're like, "You know what? Let's fix the problem. Let's create the awareness that cables matter, good products matter," and I think we can do that together.
Good cables matter, good products matter. Very well said. And it seems like increasingly over the 21 InfoComs I've been attending now, end users are continuing to be empowered, more influential. We're concerned about the voice of the customer, the experience of the customer. I think USB-C is fantastic for those people. It can, I think, be a puzzle, however, when it comes to interoperability. So when you approach USB-C validation, testing, what are the practices you've found most effective for catching problems before they reach the customer, before they hamper the experience, before you're going to have that voice of customer saying, "This is not working"?
Yeah. I know the issue we face with Sennheiser is that regardless of who provided the chipset, who provided the cable, the customer calls Sennheiser because that's the label that they see on the front. Yeah. So it really puts the onus on us to make sure that, yes, we have a formal testing lab. And we actually have in-house our own testing facilities where we can put these things through these extreme conditions so that when we go to the actual certification laboratory, which of course costs money, so if we're going to have a problem, we'd rather figure it out in-house—Right—before we go to the lab. But the idea is that by the time it gets to the customer, we should have removed any question or confusion about is this going to work.
So I'm going to ask both of you to put on your amazing Creston hat and to predict the future a little bit. So the pressure is on. As USB-C matures, what do you see coming next? And beyond that, what's the one piece of advice you'd give to teams designing products and spaces that need to be reliable, not just today, which of course we're concerned about, but also ready for whatever the standard looks like tomorrow, so we don't have to worry about rip, replace, change, reimagine? What's coming next?
More speed, more data, more power. All the things are more. And I look forward to a future where it's like I have a battery-based system, and we can plug it in, and it just works. So I'm really, really looking forward to seeing as these things evolve, and this is due to that 240 watts and the EPR and the data things and the monitors, and it's just, let's simplify our lives and focus on what's important.
Charlie? Well, I completely agree with Matt saying in terms of that there's going to be more power, there's going to be more speed, but there's also going to be more things like higher levels of encryption and more security. And typically that means that then the cables get to be a little bit pickier, right? Yeah. We've got to make sure that we're using right quality suppliers. We as a manufacturer means we've got to vet our process and look at our supply chain all the way back. But then also we have to work on educating the channel, educating our installers, educating the channel into that, hey, our products work best when used with other quality products, and that at the end of the day, if we want to have happy customers, we've got to make sure that that signal chain is seamless, just the same as we would do for maybe a high-quality video signal. We've got to do that now looking for the data and power delivery as well.
I don't think there's any doubt about it. So changes will keep coming, and USB-C power delivery probably is still a Wild West, but it feels a little bit less wild now that you've explained it, given us some benchmarks. So thank you for all your help. Really do appreciate it, Charlie and Matt. Thank you.
Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dan.
My name is Dan Ferrisi, Group Director, Content and Editorial, Industrial and Tech at Emerald, working in partnership with the HDBaseT Alliance here at InfoComm 2026, talking about the issues of the day so that you—integrators, consultants, industry stakeholders—can feel empowered and enabled to do your best in the coming months and years.