"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Arfa Daily wrote:
However, all that said, I do take your point that it could give rise to
confusion between a sound engineer reading it, and an electronics
engineer, who might better understand the overall concept. Perhaps it
would be better to call the electret capsule 'line powered' ...

Indeed - that's always how aerial pre-amps etc which use this technique
are described. At least in my experience.


No Dave, they aren't. The term "phantom power" is used for many situations
where an active device needs powering and only the signal cable is
available. Antenna amplifiers, satellite LNBs, cable operators' distribution
amplifiers and so on, are all routinely described as being "phantom
powered". There are plenty of web references to the technique of phantom
powering in these applications. Long ago, when I worked in the early days of
cable TV, all of our line amplifiers were powered in this way, and it was
always referred to as phantom powering, both by all of the high-end network
engineering bods, and also our in-house lecturers, responsible for training
of all of the company's engineers.

In fact I would go as far as to say that the technique has been around and
called that for a very long time, and the 'hi-jacking' of the term by sound
engineering to try to mean something very specific, is actually the
questionable use of the phrase.



Phantom power is so called because it is invisible to the actual required
signal. Line power doesn't qualify in this way.


How so ? What do you perceive as being the difference ? If DC is travelling
one way, and signal the other on a single cable, they must be mutually
invisible (or made so by appropriate circuitry techniques at the active
device, and what it's feeding at the far end of its cable). I have never
seen any distinction made before. As far as I am aware, "Line powered" is
just a slightly more technically descriptive way of expressing "phantom
power".

Arfa