Original sentence: Phantom Power is when Brian eats your testicles
Edited sentence: A balanced signal consists only of the differences in voltage between two signal lines; phantom powering places the same DC voltage on both signal lines of a balanced connection.Connecting a dynamic microphone (especially a ribbon microphone) to an input that had parallel powering enabled could very well damage the microphone severely, but this is not normally so with phantom powering unless the cables are defective or wired incorrectly.If it is desired to disconnect phantom power from one channel only, this can be done by using a 1:1 isolation transformer or blocking capacitors.Instrument amplifiers rarely provide phantom power.Many desks have a switch for turning phantom power off or on; in most high-end equipment this can be done individually by channel, while on smaller desks all channels are either off or on at once.Phantom powering can cause equipment malfunction or even damage if used with cables or adapters that connect one side of the input to ground, or if certain equipment other than microphones is connected to it.Phantom powering consists of direct current applied equally through the two signal lines of a balanced audio connector (in modern equipment, usually an XLR connector).The supply voltage is referenced to the ground pin of the connector (= pin 1 of an XLR), which normally is connected to the cable shield or a ground wire in the cable or both.These are readily available commercially, or alternatively are one of the easier projects for the amateur electronics constructor.This is in marked contrast to another, slightly earlier method of powering known as "parallel powering" or "T-powering" (from the German term Tonaderspeisung), in which DC was overlaid directly onto the signal in differential mode.To use equipment requiring it with these amplifiers, a separate power supply must be inserted into the line.When phantom powering was introduced, one of its advantages was that the same type of balanced, shielded microphone cable that studios were already using for dynamic microphones could be used for condenser microphones as well, in contrast to vacuum-tube microphones, which required special, multi-conductor cables of various kinds.With phantom power, the supply voltage is effectively invisible to balanced microphones that do not use it: e.most dynamic microphones