Originally Posted by cydewaze
Actually, I have a carbon bike and an aluminum bike, and when I built up the alu bike (recently) I'd forgotten all about the whole ride quality issue. That is, until the first ride. It does have a carbon fork, and the fork probably helps a little, but it rides nothing like my carbon bike. On smoother roads it's fine, and in fact I did the MS-150 on it with no problems, but most of our riding is on chip seal roads that are very rough, and it's very easy to determine ride quality of a bike.
If I like the way something rides, I'm going to buy it. It doesn't matter if the material is "in" or if it's "cheap".
"Ride quality" is a tenous thing. If you just want a comfy ride, get a whippy frame. And while you compare carbon and ally, did you use the same wheels? tires? they make a huge difference. My concept of ride quality is different, I want as much energy as possible transfered to the rear wheel. My issue with carbon is road feel at high speeds, I prefer to know exactly what's going on the road at 50-60 km/h. Ally frames can be dramatically different from manufacturer to manufacturer. That's why it's impossible to generalize on frame material. Comparing my ally soloist to the CD R1000 was night and day.
At CSC this year, several riders opted for the ally Solist over the Carbon, including Jullich and Voight. The external bearing hollow axle cranks are a good example of ally tech still ahead of carbon. I had a one-day tester of the carbon soloist with money in pocket -didn't like it, was very dissapointed (although a gorgeous bike).