Good news! Nex7 with ACR6.5 is much better than a77.

[agorabasta]

You may mod the Nex7 raw with exiftool to change the camera ID to a77. And Nex7 then looks about as good as Nex5N at image level.

[agorabasta]

Here is an ISO3200 Nex7 sample developed in Lr3.5 with both sharpening and NR at zero (all the 'detail' module switched off); the blacks set at zero too.
And then a tiny 100% crop at '100' JPEG quality. (It's so tiny due to this site file size limitations.)

[agorabasta]

Here's the same with some NR and sharpening, then also sharpened 'for screen' at export.

(Luma NR 25/50, chroma NR 15/70; sharpening 25/1.0/25)

[agorabasta]

Now some more realistic developing settings with and without NR/sharpening; but the black level is being left unrealistically high at zero.
The crop is from a very dark OOF part of the image full of small coloured detail. Notice the detail is not obliterated at all.

(And you may try those NR/sharpening settings on the a77 files as well, but push the NR strength up by 10/5 for luma/chroma.)

[alphaomega]

Surprised to see Luminance set to 75 in LR on a Jpeg. As I understand it Jpeg images already receive Luminance reduction "in camera". I never go beyond 30 when adjusting RAW images. Thereafter there is always a reduction in sharpness (as I understand it) and setting 30 would appear to be adequate to deal with luminance noise. Actually I would not pay any attention to A77 image quality until the new firmware is released for A65 and A77. Now mid October per latest SAR entry.

[agorabasta]

What JPEG???

That's a raw file developed in Lr3.5.

And then again, most modern sensor cam's raw files respond better to high values of luma NR/detail/contrast in Lr/ACR. There's something changed in that software for all the sensors seen in the newer cams, and that includes the old 12Mp one variation still used in a 'new' X100, so the a700 is covered too.

[agorabasta]

Here's the level of detail from the DPR a77 ISO3200 raw sample developed with the same settings.
Notice the much stronger noise but still very good detail retention.

[alphaomega]

What JPEG???

That's a raw file developed in Lr3.5.

And then again, most modern sensor cam's raw files respond better to high values of luma NR/detail/contrast in Lr/ACR. There's something changed in that software for all the sensors seen in the newer cams, and that includes the old 12Mp one variation still used in a 'new' X100, so the a700 is covered too.

Sorry about that Agorabasta. I still stand by my statement that once you go above Luminance 30 in LR3 on a RAW file (A580) you get smothering and I certainly do not like the results from setting Luminance at 75. Try setting 3:1 and move the Luminance slider towards 100. The progressive smothering is obvious.

[agorabasta]

I still stand by my statement that once you go above Luminance 30 in LR3 on a RAW file (A580) you get smothering and I certainly do not like the results from setting Luminance at 75.

Well, everybody's free to like whatever they prefer

But would be better if you provided a sample with your preferred processing. So that we could compare.

Mind also that, the a77 is really NOISY. Its raw data simply requires some very heavy processing. And it's rather amazing that something tolerable still may be distilled from that pile of raw noise.