philmar wrote in post #4850009
What each program does at default is ONLY of benefit to those whose would not change anything and these people should just be shooting jpeg. It is a worthless, trivial and arcane comparison.
DPP gives a better default rendition of my 30D files but ACR is my prefered choice because of where I end up, rather than because of my starting point.
It may be worthless and/or trivial to you, but of interest to others such as the JPG shooters you mentioned. JPG shooters by definition do not convert from RAW, thus the reason they are called JPG shooters.
Now for those JPG shooters that may want to give RAW a shot, the various results from default settings in the different RAW converters could be of great interest and value in deciding if they want to go with the free DPP raw converter, which I used for several years until I learned a little more and wanted to improve the quality of my post processing. After some comparison and research these folks may want to invest some money and try one of the pay to play converters. i.e ACR, DxO.
Some folks do in fact like a simpler approach to post processing where they have to perform little or no tweaking. Thus, default settings are very important.
Further, your choice of the word "arcane" as a discriptor is suspect. There is nothing cryptic, enigmatic, or mysterious about the comparison, nor is it hard to understand. It is merely a simple comparison of default settings of RAW converters.
Economic policies are arcane. The underlying philosophy of Spongebob Squarepants is arcane. Why folks choose Nikon over Canon, to some of us here on POTN, is arcane. Your choice of the word arcane could in and of itself be considered arcane.
A comparison of default setting results in RAW converters is certainly not arcane.
Happy Shooting and post processing! 
