Isn't this where parametric editing falls down?
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I think what is "falling down" is the amount of time people are looking at images at 1:1, 2:1 or higher...I honestly think that most of the people that have been posting about this issue really and truly don't understand the implications of what they think they are seeing...
Fact; CR 4.1 and LR 1.1 are "different" than previous version of CR/LR...
Fact; Camera Raw 4.1 & Lightroom 1.1 have both improved noise reduction and sharpening...
Fact; very few people know how to use the new tools...
Fact; there's been a lot of "tests" and befores/afters from a wide variety of people, cameras, ISOs-so many in fact that pretty much everybody is now further confused...
Opinion; people need to learn what a computer display can and can't show you. Looking at 50% or 25% zooms will tell you more regarding what detail is visible and relevant in a print. Making an actual print will tell you a lot more about what can be seen in a print.
Opinion; testing anything at "defaults" is useless, turning stuff off or all the way up/down are useless. Optimal testing would be to optimize an image in CR 4.1/LR 1.1 and compare the same final prepared image done in CR 4.0/LR 1.0.
Is CR 4.1/LR 1.1 capable of producing better, smoother and more detailed raw conversions? In my testing, yes...and I was actually paid by Adobe to test this stuff. but I only had access to about 10 cameras whose ISOs varied.
Will there be camera model to camera model variations between what the demosiacing, luminance smoothing and sharpening do to various ISO images? You bet.
That's why it would be useful to cut down on the chatter and the chaos and try to concentrate on 1) are there any real, repeatable cases where it can be proven that CR 4.1/LR 1.1 does a worse job and 2) exactly what cameras at what ISOs.
So far I've seen a lot of informal "tests" with little or no documentation, history records to be able to replicate the results nor raw examples posted to duplicate the results. Until that happens, it's all anecdotal information not evidence...