Ships in a bottle. Pointillist paintings. Josephson Microphones. When an obsessive personality finds a labor of love, the results can be both impressive and a little geeky.

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The designers at Josephson use their zest for minutiae, anechoic chambers and a battery of precision instruments to build microphones to tolerances measured in nanometers. They pick dust off components one particle at a time.

Craftsmanship like that does not come cheap. Some Josephson mics cost as much as $7,000, but their owners say they are worth every cent.

Josephson's facilities are located across from a boutique bakery and hair salon in a refurbished industrial area of Santa Cruz, California. The offices resemble a college physics lab and the employees older versions of the students you would find there. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at how some of the world's finest microphones are made.

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Stick your head inside Josephson’s anechoic chamber, a big box that blocks out exterior sound and suppresses echoes, and you will discover that pure silence is the opposite of peaceful.

Like being in pitch darkness, the nearly complete quiet is disorienting, a novel sensation that initiates a kind of instinctual threat assessment. Once you’ve heard nothing, you realize that in normal life you are always hearing something, even if it is an almost imperceptible hum.