I've never heard or measured a PE woofer but a lot of the Titanic engineering is good, such as the shorting ring, progressive spider, and venting scheme. I'm shooting for less than 2% THD at 1W/20Hz plus high output levels at low distortion. That's what the 18mm of Xmax is for.
I'm going to use a very heavy, Dynamat damped stamped basket from Alpha Products of Chicago instead of the Chinese-made cast basket of the Titanic, which tends to be brittle (I have a collection of shattered Chinese cast frames that arrived that way). Cone and spider are from RDM of Arkansas.
I should also point out that pole pieces, front and back plates, and magnet donuts all come from China now. They invariably require deburring and often remilling, as the offshore yokes are frequently out of round.
The domestic assembler (in our case Misco of Minneapolis) must do this, plus wind voicecoils, assemble, charge and test.