Originally posted by Sailor I've labored for years under the illusion that camera settings (other than exposure) invariably have no influence on RAW files, regardless of PP software.
Strictly speaking, your statement is correct. A raw file is unaffected by camera settings. What is affected is the raw conversion software's interpretation of how the image should look.
Every software will give a different interpretation of contrast, saturation, hue, sharpness, NR, WB, etc., and some attempt to incorporate the camera settings when they import. But none of these settings are written to the file until you convert to jpeg. They can be changed without loss, whereas any changes made in jpeg will cause some loss of quality.
Note that DCU5 and LR5 for example will import NR, WB and sharpness settings from the camera, but how they show these in the raw viewer, and how they convert will differ, because each is using its own algorithms.