...Grounded or Ungrounded Power Cords...

“Now what this company is doing is dangerous. The company is deliberately selling a product that could cause serious injury to the buying consumer.
https://audioenvy.com/product/power-cord/ocean-elite-copy/

With our New Gen 6 release, the ground wire is disconnected from the female IEC. Improvements have been made for exceptional tonal balance.”

@jea48,

Please do not mislead folks with incomplete facts about Audio Envy Power Cords. There is a logical explanation behind ungrounded power cords. You may not agree with reasoning but it works. I have been using AE ungrounded power cords for over year and half. Absolutely no issues!!!
As far as next guy comment, it’s up to the seller to disclose and educate why the wires are ungrounded. There is a running ad on USAM explaining exactly why the wires are ungrounded.
https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649645244-audio-envy-ocean-elite-2p-power-cords-various-lengths/

Here is the complete explanation of why to use ungrounded power cords.

Excepts from Audio Envy website:

With our New Gen 6 release, the ground wire is disconnected from the female IEC. Improvements have been made for exceptional tonal balance.

WHY?

Based upon measurements and listening tests; I have recommended to people, to ground only one piece of their interconnected equipment. The interconnects will provide static dissipation through the secondary ground connection & nuetral. They often look at me in extreme terror.

Wikipedia agrees…

Wiki; A ground loop is the result of careless or inappropriate design or interconnection of electrical equipment that results in there being multiple paths to ground where this is not required, so a complete loop is formed. In the simplest case, two items of equipment, A and B, are each connected to a wall socket by a 3 conductor cable, containing a protective ground conductor. This becomes a problem when a interconnect cable is connected between A and B, to pass data or audio signals. The shield of the data cable is typically connected to the grounded equipment chassis of both A and B. There is now a ground loop.

How can you benefit from this? Purchase the Ocean Elite P3 cord to hook to your preamp or integrated receiver…All other power cords in the system, such as source equipment, dacs, amplifiers, subwoofers,etc. should all use ocean Elite P2. This will direct ground your system, removing hum and reduce harmonic distortion from your system. We’ve seen multi thousand dollar power conditioners that do not fix or address this issue. The issues of ground loops are often greater then the dirtiness of the actual AC power!

Need More?

• Hot: The black wire is the hot wire, which provides a 120 VAC current source.

• Neutral: The white wire is called the neutral wire. It provides the return path for the current provided by the hot wire. The neutral wire is connected to an EARTH GROUND!!!

• Ground: The bare wire is called the ground wire. Like the neutral wire, the ground wire is also connected to an earth ground. However, the neutral and ground wires serve two distinct purposes.

  The neutral wire forms a part of the live circuit along with the hot wire. In contrast, the ground wire is connected to any metal parts in an appliance such as a microwave oven or coffee pot. This is a safety feature, in case the hot or neutral wires somehow come in contact with metal parts. Connecting the metal parts to earth ground eliminates the shock hazard in the event of a short circuit. (KEY WORD IS SHORT CIRCUIT, Meaning your electronics are broken!)

The US still has some millions of homes built back before the extra redundant earth ground became code. All those homes use power cords, and everything else, with no extra redundant earth ground. Just like with all those homes, there's a slew of power cords that don't have the extra redundant earth ground and people are using them perfectly fine. I've got two of them going to my Dayton sub amps.

The OP asked, "Why, and do they sound different?" Not one reply so far addresses these questions. When the answer is obviously they do it precisely because it sounds different- and they like that sound.

Instead we get "It has exactly one purpose and that is to prevent electrocution." And a million variations on that theme. 

We all use electricity every day. Yet no one seems to really understand it. So we get all this mindless recitation, repeating stuff we heard or read somewhere. Once upon a time.

All of which proves my first post. If we can't get a popcorn gif can we at least get a popcorn emoji? 🍿  No not that one. Was thinking more Putin eating popcorn.

Better off using an EbTech if you're going to "cheat"
Don't want no stinkin' popcorn.

turnbowm

It was the Audio Envy site that led to this question...