Do softer tires provide better suspension? From my limited experience, soft tires feel more bouncy than hard ones, with same pressure. That is, if you lift and drop front side of unloaded bike, with soft rubber on front wheel it will jump like a bouncy ball (kind of). But with hard rubber it'll jump more like badly inflated football/basketball (at low pressure) or like a sack of potatoes (at high pressure). Other things being equal (size, tread, pressure), do you think soft rubber tire will provide better suspension than hard rubber? EDIT: made a test with Schwalbe CX Comp (soft) vs some Vee Rubber harder compound tire (same width) - dropped front side of unloaded bike from a small height. CX Comp definitely feels more bouncy and jumps more silently. But actually maybe they bounce with same rebound, since it's hard to measure precisely.

There are tires made out of thin layers of relatively soft rubber, and ones (usually for puncture resistance) made out of thick layers of relatively stiff (almost like plastic) rubber. At a given tire pressure, the soft tire will be "bouncier" because the softer rubber has less of a viscoelastic damping effect than the harder rubber. As a result, the softer tire will have less rolling resistance _for a given tire pressure_.

(This is why I prefer puncture-resistant tires that employ a Kevlar belt (eg, Forte K models) vs those (Schwalbe Marathon) that employ a thick hard rubber layer in the tread -- less rolling resistance.)