The compressionless cable outer certainly helps here which removes most of the spongy feel you typically get with cable discs. Stopping happens generally quite quickly, modulation is quite good however not quite on par with a hydraulic disc setup though. This makes the brake quite good on longer descents where hand fatigue can come into play. If you are used to riding a rim braked bike you will find that discs are grabby at first, but your brain naturally adjusts to the lower hand effort required. I can't really say for sure as I have only ever owned one other disc setup and that was a dual piston hydraulic. The other is that possibly the pads would wear more evenly. What are the advantages of dual pistons? Firstly the power and rotor clearance is identical to a single piston setup, however adjusting pads due to wear is as simple as using the barrel adjuster, it's a little tricker with a single piston setup. Typically these brakes are setup with the inner fixed pad 1mm or so away from the rotor, the outer piston comes in and the rotor is deformed slightly which creates the braking force. The Spyres are unique in that they are so far the only cable operated disc on the market that is dual piston, most other brakes have a fixed pad inboard and an outer pad which is worked on by the piston and lever. This seems like a poor workaround instead of locking it mechanically with a ratchet system like on Avid's BB7 calipers. I suspect the problem is with the design, they are grub screws with a layer of thread lock on them, however I suspect under usage the heat renders it useless which causes it to reset. I now compensate the brake for wear by using the cable adjuster and leave the pad adjusters wound all the way out. The screw must be loosening itself under use and resetting itself. What I have found though is that on the revised Spyre calipers, the new pad adjusters aren't too great, as once they are set they screwed in to set a pad position, they don't hold their adjustment. Other than wearing quickly the stock pads give good bite and stay quiet. I switched to EBC Gold metallic pads a few months ago and they have required very little adjustment due to wear despite being ridden in quite poor conditions. The stock pads were a little worn and I was a bit concerned at how fast they wore in wet or muddy conditions. I covered the break-in process in my previous post, and this hasn't really changed.

So I decided to upsize to 180mm and get an Ice-tech rotor, these have a layer of alloy sandwiched between the outer stainless steel layers which increases heat loss.

The setup is not completely stock, the Shimano dynamo hub I chose only came in centrelock and the price of a centrelock to 6-bolt adaptor was about the same as an entirely new disc.

Avid bb5 adjustment