It seems that everyone who has reviewed these cameras has stated that the files look better in color, shadow detail, highlight retention, etc.
So, uh, I am going to take Chuck's word over yours :-)
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Chuck is a business person. What he is going to say is what he thinks is good for the company (and his own standing there), and within the limits of his own knowledge and understanding.
Canon's official statements have proven to be incorrect in the past; remember the white papers that said how the "big pixel" cameras (5D and 1Dmk2) have better high-ISO performance because they collected more photons with their bigger photosites? The fact is, these cameras have a lower quantum efficiency than the Canon 20D, and even less than some P&S cameras. The high-ISO pixel performance is almost exactly the same on all three cameras. The only reason the 1Dmk2 gives better high-ISO images than the 20D is because the coarser pixel spacing requires less from the optics for a sharp image, and the anti-aliasing filter is weaker, meaning the sharpness of "image" is greater, relative to the sharpness of noise. Nothing electrical, or related to photons at all. The bigger pixels captured more photons total, but that requires a greater exposure (ISO 50).
Never trust a company, or its representatives, completely. Always verify what they say.
As far as 14-bit Canons are concerned, it is impossible to get a 12-bit RAW out of the same camera, so you are comparing 14-bit from one, newer camera, along with the possibility that it is forcing the converter to work with more shadow precision (something it could have always done without the extra two bits), to another, older camera.
Those of us who have taken 14-bit RAW data and quantized the data to 12-bit, have found no loss in image detail in any tonal range.
Do you have any idea how much pixel values vary due to noise alone? The difference between values at 14-bit, and what they are rounded to when quantized to 12 bits, is only a very tiny fraction of the amount the pixel values are varying due to noise, except in the very deepest shadows of the lowest ISOs. In fact, for the midtone and highlight areas, the rounding is virtually infinitessimal compared to the shot noise.
All the apparent benefits of 14-bit RAW processing are available by just promoting 12-bit RAWs to 14 bits by padding them with '10' (binary), just like you get better results by converting an 8-bit JPEG to 16-bit in photoshop before extensively editing it.