When sitting on a saddle should the saddle "encompass" the sit bones or should the saddle "rise up" between the sit bones. In otherwords, with a proper fit, should the sit bones be in the center of the saddle "padding" or should the sit bones be to the outside of the saddle "padding" sort of wedging up in between the sit bones.??

I'm guessing the bones should be centered on the padding but I honestly don't know.

The saddle should be wider than the sit bones. You don't want a saddle narrower than your sit bones.

-Matt

Kinda not sure about what you really want to know, but yes, as previously posted the saddle is wider than the sit bones.

But since many people ride differently, perceive pain and discomfort differently and have varying musculature and such about their sit bones, there are an overwhelming amount of different ways to pad or not pad that saddle that is made for your width of sit bones. So no magic number or formula will assure you satisfaction. You just have to try and learn what works for you or not.

For me, padding is generally a bad thing on the saddle. If I am wearing bike shorts with a chamois, then the padding of the saddle seems to work against the padding of the chamois. Mostly I find that it's a matter of how in-shape the muscles in my butt are. When they are out of shape at the beginning of my riding season, my butt has pains a half day or so afterwards. At the end of the season when my butt muscles are in shape, I could probably ride a brick and be comfortable.

In an attempt to rephrase the OP's question.. what downside is there, if any, to too wide of a saddle, even if a narrower option might be available that is still overall wider than your sitbones? There must be a reason saddle makers might over 30/40 and 50mm+ options, and why not just offer the 50mm+ width?

If you're going to be riding for more than 10-15 minutes, you'll probably find that saddle padding "rising up" between your sit bones is going to become very uncomfortable, very fast. The soft tissue there is NOT a good support for your body weight. If you're just riding half a mile down to the store/clubhouse/whatever, it probably doesn't matter.

Too wide a saddle for me means that I'll get some chaffing. But I'm on a road bike. Probably entirely different for some styles of recumbent bikes, beach cruisers and such.

Saddles that might be excellent comfort for a twenty minute ride can be horrible for a four hour ride.

The width of the sit-bone area often relates to the width of the nose. On all the saddles I see, wide ones seem to have wider noses, skinny ones have skinny noses. Inner thigh clearance being normalized, would be a good design reason.

I would think that narrow sit bones & wide nose would look & ride like a bananna seat & chafe the inner thigh in no time for a narrow sit-bone rider. Likewise, the opposite combination would offer too much "slop" or a lesser degree of control or stabilizing effect if a riden by a wide sit-bone rider. Especially if elevated from the seat for some reason. Say, hovering on a technical section of trail or whatever.

While we're at it: There are no-nose saddles available for uses where the nose presents a fitment problem.

So just offering only wide saddles as per the OP's question, does create other complications. So, a range of sizes offers a diverse range of fits.