What makes an expensive speaker expensive

Smoothed and damped does not eliminate the breakup distortion, it just minimizes the harshness of it.  At the same time, it damps information someone may have spent 10's of thousand's on the front end of the system to get. Metal cone drivers use the crossover to notch the breakup peak out, but it does not eliminate the breakup. Many believe it is still audible, just less so. This is a very well defined breakup and the driver is pistonic below this breakup frequency forcing the designer to use steep slope crossovers which have their own ringing to add to the soup. Hi-End audio is all about resolution and is why some people spend huge amounts of money on the front end of a system regardless of the vinyl/digital argument.  I realize that many of you are married to paper cones and enjoy the 'smoothness' of them.  The fact remains that they still have more distortion than a true pistonic driver.  That's supported by measurements and to many of us, we hear much more detail in these types of speakers than in paper coned drivers regardless of what you have done to them in order to try and minimize the break up.  The fact remains that you aren't able to, you can just try and work around it.  

This is why the newer materials that are offered to designers are making this hobby a blast.  So many great designs can now flourish with carbon fiber, better made capacitors and resistors.  Just so many great advances in audio right now and more to come.  Even the diamond coating crowd is trying to make a more pistonic cone.  Tidal speakers use diamond coated  tweeters and the black ceramic in their 200k plus speakers and to me, they are nearly in the Vandersteen 7 mk 2 camp at almost 4X the cost.  

Good discussion here and insightful comments from Tim. I don’t get the sense that anyone is "married" to paper cones at all. Rather they simply identify the natural tonality and sound quality that they can provide. Carbon Fiber, ceramic, aluminum, poly plastics etc. Each has its strengths and thus proponents as well as inevitable short comings. None of these materials are without some intrinsic  flaw, yet each can be used successfully with high level implementation.

Tradeoffs abound and choices must be made. Some would choose natural tone over ultra micro detail and some will choose the converse.
Charles,

Paper cones are often treated, or even composites, and from this a variety of diaphragms emerges that may all be called "paper cones," but that does not follow the typical shortcomings of paper cones equally. Even if they did, what is truly gained in a discussion of sound by making reference to their mechanical properties as a basis to support our sonic impressions? All we have in listening to reproduced music through our stereo’s is what we hear, and to me that’s the reference first and foremost that should put into question theory; not the other way round. That is to say: the aspect of pistonic behavior of a cone not made of paper and its claimed advantages into "micro details" (and ultimately its superiority in musical reproduction as a whole) compared to the break-up behavior of a paper cone (or its varieties) can be moot for several reasons, in that our ears may tell us differently. It appears to be more of a marketing ploy to single out one aspect as all-important than to be humble (and less outspoken) on the challenge of implementation.

Marketing ploy?  Seriously?  No it's not a marketing ploy at all.  It's just an agree to disagree. I just pointed out that no matter how you treat it, it's still going to break up.  Even a big name maker of paper coned drivers admits this.  To many, like the few posters who are opposing some of what I say (or even all of it) I'll never change your minds and that's cool.  Just stating some facts about paper cones, but as many have said, you can still make a nice speaker from them.  I'm talking about full out assault on speakers and when you are playing in that league I'm saying there are better choices available now that don't break up, so why not use a better material to make a better driver.  Yes, they will be very expensive and that's why so many speakers are so expensive now.  That's the original post.  When I see the most well known speaker company using paper cones in their woofers and that the cost to replace these drivers just isn't that expensive, it makes me think they can probably do much better and not charge so much.  That's how we all got started on paper cones (yes, I stated they break up regardless of how you treat them) argument.  I stand by the fact that with break up, it won't let you get the last bit of detail from the driver and that's where the emotion lies.  Many top speaker designers will tell you that.  That's what we are paying for in all of our systems.  That's where much of the incremental sound increases lie...The micro detail.  To those of you who are designing speakers, I think it's awesome.  I just feel that you can probably make a better sounding speaker using better drivers than paper coned ones regardless of what stiffener you use and how you play with a crossover.  Again, I can't and won't change your minds, just like you won't change mine.  I've heard so many top end speakers over the years and honestly have never warmed up to any of the paper coned ones for a variety of reasons.  I never even realized it until I had a long discussion with one of the largest named speaker designers about what speakers I like and don't and why.  He then pointed out many things, but said that every paper coned speaker we discussed were on my no way I could own them list.  Again, I do respect you guys and feel that this is one of the first true discussions I've read on this board.

Are any of you builders selling your speakers commercially?  I'd love to see their designs etc...  Thanks.  Pete