You are thinking air movement as opposed to pressure wave. Sound is not moving air, not in a linear movement sense. Cones do provide rigidity, naturally, in the axis of movement which potentially allows them to be lighter. Unlike Eric, I am quite fond of some ceramic drivers, however, there are pluses and minuses like almost every driver.
Don’t let people over complicate a ham sandwich. There are a lot of things that go into a world class speaker, much tech buried in drivers, some in capacitors, some in cabinets, some in acoustics (not as much as you would think for many companies), and yet, Wilson speakers was started by a staff writer at an audio magazine. No one, Dunlavy included knows everything, hence why he used off the shelf drivers, and his speakers were relatively traditional construction, just well optimized for his particular design goal (time/phase alignment) and tightly controlled in manufacturing.
Don’t let people over complicate a ham sandwich. There are a lot of things that go into a world class speaker, much tech buried in drivers, some in capacitors, some in cabinets, some in acoustics (not as much as you would think for many companies), and yet, Wilson speakers was started by a staff writer at an audio magazine. No one, Dunlavy included knows everything, hence why he used off the shelf drivers, and his speakers were relatively traditional construction, just well optimized for his particular design goal (time/phase alignment) and tightly controlled in manufacturing.