Thanks, Guillermo...
I know that a lot of magic can be do to fit 10 lbs into a 5 lbs bag.....dodging/burning, negative development, tonal compression, etc.
My tern, without user involvement, was poorly chosen.....and a lot of the responses took off into interesting, but not necessarily practical directions...so I sort of gave up.
Let me ask it a little different.
In camera, the raw image gets converted to jpeg. If you started withy. Raw image of, say, 12 stops of DR....what would one expect the DR of the jpeg to be.
Take the same Raw image to ACR/LR....on opening, what would the DR be...about...not excruciatingly scientifically correct.
Again, I may not have asked this correctly, but I think you may understand where I am basically heading.
John