There may be other factors in place but my rear racing Ralph makes a noticeable amount of noise when climbing out of the saddle on the road.
Never noticed it with ground controls, mud x or small block 8s.
Thinking of going to ground controls for a bit more bite , if they are quicker as well that would be a bonus.

My 2.25 Nobby Nic is noisy on tarmac but doesn’t feel draggy.

Conti Race Kings sound like a Tie Fighter above 30 mph on tarmac 😀

Sound does = energy lost tbh
Try putting more air in?

Tubeless? They make a lot more noise. As do latex inner tubes.

Well yes, noise = lost energy.
But Ralph comes up as one of the fastest MTB tyres available every time its tested.
I’d put money on MudX, SB8 or GC being significantly slower than a Ralph.
In fact I seem to remember seeing somewhere that SB8 being fast is something of a marketing myth, and its actually barely any quicker than most enduro tyres.

Is a noisy tyre a slow tyre?

Not necessarily. A hard rubber tyre will be noisy, but potentially has less friction…thus could be more efficient.

Not necessarily. A hard rubber tyre will be noisy, but potentially has less friction…thus could be more efficient.

Aah… but if there’s less traction gained (all important as an MTB tyre) as it has less friction doesn’t that make it less efficient? Just a thought.

There may be other factors in place

There will be other factors but they won’t be ones you can hear or sense in any other way while you’re riding. Your peddling effort can be lost as noisy, heat, drag, friction and so on, and any performance (or lack off) will be a combination of all those. But noise in itself isn’t that big a factor – think of the effort required to make noise versus the effort required to make heat.

Noise can be indicative that all those other things are going on though.

This may help in your decision making….

There may be other factors in place but my rear racing Ralph makes a noticeable amount of noise when climbing out of the saddle on the road.

My RacingRalph has about as much grip as a marble covered in olive oil…
That said, taking on Nimmo’s at Aberfoyle in the wet was probably ‘optimistic’…
(it is fast uphill though..)

>This may help in your decision making….

Give me 10 minutes and I’ll produce a graph saying that using live kittens as wheels has the lowest rolling resistance.

(What i’m saying, is – do you have a reputable source?)

Whilst the noise is lost energy, it’s a tiny portion of total lost energy.

A very elastic rubber (with low hysteresis) will make more noise – some of my fast road tyres are pretty noisy, as are my faster MTB tyres (Schwalbe RRs included).

My dual ply super tacky high Rollers are near silent, except when flinging pebbles at the down tube – very soft rubber, absorbs all the vibrations. And all the kinetic energy.
Edit

(What i’m saying, is – do you have a reputable source?)

I’m guessing http://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/

Think his source is here:
http://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/

Takes more effort with google, but the Germans magazines like their tyre tests and you can find similar data from those.

Edit: Ninja’d – bah!

You notice some carcasses are just noisy- like, I put some fast trak swurks carcass tyres on mine and it made a constant sort of drum brush noise, i think because it was thin and stretched tight whereas a thicker more solid tyre doesn’t reverbrate the same.

Why are you bothered by the fact that a Ralph makes a noise on tarmac? Of course it does. It’s an off-road tyre. Don’t sweat it.

Noise isn’t the problem, heat is. But it’s very hard to accurately measure the temperature change in a fairly large tyre in constant air-flow being propelled by a person who can only put out a few hundred watts.

Often heavier tyres are slower, not because of their mass but because of the increased hysteresis losses in the carcass and tread.

here ya go

http://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/mtb-reviews

air breathing self reciprocators need not apply

a bit like a solar powered penis pump for the dumb