What's your budget? I'm personally a fan of compact doubles, at least on road bikes. I've had better luck with my compact than my triple, but I also went from Shimano to SRAM, so it's not comparing apples to apples.

I also like carbon, but we have a lot of really rough chipseal. If our roads were nice asphalt I'd probably be fine with aluminum and maybe swap for higher end components for the same price.