Extreme audio designs -- at their most audacious (pictures)

The Audiophiliac recently visited the Oswald's Mill Audio showroom in Brooklyn to take in the full experience. The big draw was the new Ironic speaker, and while this image looks great, it's nothing like seeing it in Brooklyn.

Viewed from the side, the Ironic is a thin panel, while from the rear you see a vintage 15-inch woofer and a ribbon tweeter. The woofer radiates sound forward and to the rear. The Ironic speakers are works of art that also play music.

A tight shot of the Ironic's intricate casting.

Four years in the making, the Imperia is a four-way speaker system with a vertical array of massive horn drivers and a subwoofer horn using a 21-inch neodymium subwoofer. OMA electronics are on the right side of the picture.

This very large loudspeaker's "body" is constructed entirely out of solid Pennsylvania hardwood walnut, cherry or ash. It is completely hand-built and finished. It features a 15-inch woofer and a vintage compression horn driver that was made by RCA for movie-theater sound systems!

This is a prototype of a speaker Weiss might call the Cobbler. It's a large, 80-pound "bookshelf" speaker that uses a vintage air motion transformer tweeter and a JBL woofer, both mounted on a 1-inch thick piece of water-jet-cut Pennsylvania slate, on a Pennsylvania black walnut cabinet.

The Mini isn't all that small -- it's 57 inches high mounted on its stand. The Mini's dynamics and clarity are truly breathtaking.

The OMA slate turntable looks more conservative than OMA's speakers, and it's as solid as a rock!

The 71-inch-tall Monarch speakers' "wings" are functional baffles that help two 15-inch woofers deliver the deepest bass frequencies. OMA's cast-aluminum alloy horn covers midrange and high frequencies. A stylish rack of OMA electronics sits between the two speakers.

This picture only shows the main part of OMA's ultimate, 15-watt-per-channel Hollander amplifier, which is built on three chassis that weigh a total of 225 pounds. Each chassis is built by hand from Pennsylvania black walnut with dovetail joinery, finished in tung oil, and topped with slate.