Originally Posted by
mulveyr
There is no such thing as a bike that is "perfectly on any terrain". It's an impossibility. A bike that excels on pavement will be poor on rough singletrack, and a bike that's awesome on rough singletrack will be less desirable on pavement.
Yep.
I currently have 5 bikes and they all are for different uses. I don't have a touring bike, but am planning to use my cyclocross bike for light/cc touring. My next bike might be a Salsa Fargo Ti for off road touring, so still no traditional touring bike in the future, although I'm sure the Fargo Ti would do just fine on the road with road tires and fully loaded. All bikes, just like all the equipment for touring, come with tradeoffs that must chosen based on the intended use.