I keep hearing on this forum that tire size and pressure are everything. I've been riding a long time and just don't buy it. My experience - fork stiffness makes a big to huge difference. Now I haven't ridden CF anything so I cannot comment on CF forks. I do know that on Cycle Oregon, every time we come to harsh chipseal, those of us riding steel and ti bikes have to hit the brakes to stay clear of the carbon bike riders who have just slowed down. (My two ti bikes both have steel forks.)
Of my 5 steel forked bikes, one is a cushy magic carpet - the old Raleigh Competition with almost fishing rod diameter Reynolds 531 fork blades with big bends. My Peter Mooney is a lot stiffer but less stiff than the forks Peter originally made for it. Good on chip seal and decent on rougher. My two ti bike forks are roughly the same as the Mooney except that ti, even using almost the same fork, is wonderful on rough roads. My '83 Trek, probably a lower end 400 something series with heavier tubing, is a real step less comfortable on poor surfaces.
Tire quality means (again in my experience) as much as tire width and pressure. The silk tubulars we raced 40 years ago were wonderful! (Probably 21c though no one measured them.) Our bigger cotton training tires with less pressure, good, but not wonderful. (23-25c?) All the clinchers I've riddine since were a real step down, getting better as I started putting the $70 best Vittorias on my good bikes. Then those bikes got the new Graphene Vittoria G+ 28c tires. Wow! A breakthrough for comfort as big as going to a titanium bicycle.
One trend that I suspect is hurting comfort - disc brakes that require stronger, stiffer forks and frames. I don't know this; just speculating. I have observed that with steel forks, stiffer means less hand comfort. Same holds true for stiffer handlebars, though again, I limit my comments to aluminum and steel.
As all this relates to chipseal and the like - when I got my first ti bike, I found myself seeking out the worst pavement simply because it was so much fun to ride over. Has to discipline myself so I wouldn't be killing tires and wheels. When I went to the 28c Vittoria G+ tires, same thing. That old Raleigh was so much fun riding really rough washboard gravel I spent a grand paying a local frame builder to assure it was string enough to do what was so much fun.
Ben