Campag4life

You need to qualify what stiffness plane you are speaking of. Probably all manufacturers and Specialized in particular, have changed the 'ratio' of stiffness for their last three generations of their Roubaixs, Tarmacs and likely all their bikes. What does that mean? They have made their bikes more vertically compliant for a friendlier ride while making them laterally stiffer. They do this by changing the moment of inertia of frame sections. Now with the new Roubaix SL4, they may have screwed the pooch because they basically made the rear triangle almost as stiff as the Tarmac which is said to make the ride in back harsher. But the bike now rides like the tightly wound spring it is. It has more of a race bike feel than say my previous gen Roubaix. You push on the pedals and it has immediate power transfer....like carving on a real stiff racing ski. People have different priorities and I believe even bike nuts like me are a bit conflicted on what we like. For me, I believe I would prefer the Emonda to the Tarmac. No, you won't get maybe the same racebike feedback on an Emonda....its more muted. But I ride on all kind of paved surfaces and many are far from smooth and on a 50 mile group ride, I don't like getting my teeth rattled if there is a bike out there that won't do that. But enthusiast riders also want feedback and many good riders will prefer a Tarmac which overall have good ride quality for a race bike. To me in comes down to preference versus what's better.