Thank you. I guess you can check before / after in DxO? Or do you get your first view in LR?
I have found that the noise reduction in DXO is wonderful, as is the correction of geometric distortion. The "default" settings for these are actually based, frame by frame, on the Exif information in the files. What little noise DXO does not eliminate is reduced to a much "finer" type of noise that is really more like film grain. If I still need to work on the noise I use Dfine, after the conversion.
My workflow with DXO is as follows:
1) I ingest the images from the card reader with Lightroom. Since I don't use DXO for every image, I make a subfolder for those images that I want to use DXO for, and move them into the folder from Lightroom.
2) I open the freestanding version of DXO and point it at the subfolder, which includes images with noticeable noise or distortions. It also includes images that will not need difficult adjustments of color, tone, saturation, etc. For the images needing just noise and distortion adjustments, I select just those processes in DXO. For the others, I add modules from Light and Color that I want applied. I then process all of the images, having DXO convert them to DXO's version of DNG.
3) I open those in Lightroom and season to taste. (or in Bridge and then Camera RAW). I then convert these to Tiffs. Some my need further work in Photoshop and layers or various plug-ins.
You wanna see complex workflow? Try adding Photomatix HDR software to the mix!