Shooting at high ISO in low kelvin lighting conditions (sub 2500k) can often cause problems with noise, but not just luminance noise..the blue colour noise can cause major problems.
In this shot at ISO 3200, the A200 is being pushed, no question..in honesty, I could have used ISO 1600 and got away with a slower shutter speed. Anyway, here is the full shot, this one is IDC v 3 converted..which does a not bad job for the skintones.
This is what you get with LR 2.3 (ACR) I was unable to get satisfactory skin tones, even using the wb sliders..still, this was about as good as I could get it
As we can see, not only does LR give a smeared out luminance pattern, the blue colour noise has raged out of control, and splattered across the dark areas esp. This is visible in a 5x7" print..being fair IDC does a poor job too. Colour NR was set to max in lr, luminance to 0
Using raw therapee, and the edge control on colour noise reduction up to max, it's better able to deal with the colour noise, and will result is a better image before you start using noise reduction software such as noise ninja. WB proved near impossible to match between the 2, even with identical settings.
My overall feeling with LR has not changed, a superior workflow tool, with an inferior raw processing engine. It's true RT, is far from perfect, it's certainly no speed demon. On the other hand, LR isn't cheap, RT is free.
I would take the RT raw engine any day over what is currently on offer. It's a shame to see the hailed industry leader, sit on their hands, and do nothing to address the points raised.