RMAF 2019

RME ADI-2 Pro FS is advertised at a little under $2k, and will provide performance that easily eclipses that of the archaic reel to reel mag tape recorder. It includes a good headphone amplifier, and very low noise high precision volume control. And you can utilize it to measure performance of other audio gear.

Third party review:
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/rme-adi-2-pro

In the user manual (link below), see section 34.20 Digital Volume Control on pages 89-90 :
https://www.rme-audio.de/download/adi2profs_e.pdf

The Wilson $330,000 XVX uses paper cones :-) ...........

The Sony SS-AR1 $27,000 (Stereophile Class-A) uses paper cones :-) .........

Some drivers exhibiting excellent performance utilize "paper" cones.

Those 'balanced', 'moderate' and 'enhanced' adjustments can be made depending upon the listeners' political beliefs, time of the day, mood of the day, type of the beverage being consumed, type of the music being played, domestic tranquillity, whether analog or digital is being played, whether tubes, transistors or hybrids are being used in the associated equipment, which brand of cables are being used, which brand of power conditioners and/or re-gererators are being used etc. etc :-) ........

Okay, I can't let this superficial and uninformed comment stand. Paper has a strength to weight ratio that eclipses all "modern" composite materials (excluding aerogels and some ceramic foams not applied in loudspeakers), including Rohacell sandwiches with woven or non-woven skins, ceramics, and any thickness of any metal you choose (including Beryllium). It has the additional benefit of dissipating energy in random directions through the randomly-oriented fibers, and it permits the widest range of modifications through adding other natural and synthetic fibers, heat pressing, coatings, resin impregnation, graphite powder impregnation, and so forth, all of which imparting desirable characteristics to the cone. A couple of manufacturers of foam-sandwich cones using Rohacell cores also use paper as the skins of the cone, because of its high ratio of tensile strength to mass density. It is also highly bondable using any type of adhesive commonly used in speaker manufacturing, from water-based glue to chloroprene rubber cements, cyanoacrylates, and epoxies, and resin impregnation of the cone apex enhances the strength of the neck bond.

Yes, paper is a material that has been around for a long time, and yes it is made from natural materials that are not uncommon. But it is the ideal material for cone loudspeakers, enabling efficient energy conversion and low sonic coloration. There are other materials that offer higher absolute strength for a given section thickness, but at the penalty of increased mass (reducing conversion efficiency of the input signal to sound) and suffering from harsh-sounding breakup modes due to lower internal damping/"loss". The only other material that is useful in cones is aluminum, and only in low frequency cones where both the fundamental pitch and the overtones are low enough in frequency not to excite the breakup modes of the cone, and where the aluminum enables pistonic motion with low loss, and light weight while remaining cost-effective. Other materials exist in speaker manufacturing, but only to deal with adverse environmental conditions or confuse the public with claims of "space-age", "aerospace" or "bulletproof" characteristics that don't address the shortcomings of those materials when used for speaker cones, or to try to justify a higher price tag through uncommon and needlessly difficult materials to use.

For tweeter domes and diaphragms, the size of the diaphragm is small enough that some metals provide an advantage in strength without a meaningful sacrifice in efficiency. For cone loudspeakers, the loss in efficiency becomes significant.

Do some research before you spout off about what you don't know.