To make a good noise reduction solution, it's important to understand the different types of noise, and where the problem is most visible.
1. Color Noise
2. Lumiance Noise
3. Banding Noise (sensor specific noise)
Noice characteristics might also be depandant on color or be more present and coarse in the shadows, while it is less to no problem in other parts of the image. A good noise solution should provide both fast and simple settings, and more advanced tweaking options if needed. Sometimes the noise is only visible in one color, often in blue sky and water, so it should be easy to reduce by color separate from other controls, and it should also be able to address the different types of noise in shadows separate from for instance midtones or highlights.
In my photography, I often take images with high contrast, where I want to keep details in the bright areas and have some details recovered with "Fill Light". This introduces in most cases a lot of coarse noise in the shadows while there's no to only fine noise in the lighter areas. On both my cameras (Canon 7D/5D II) there's also a lot of banding noise in the shadows, while it's not visible in the other parts of the image. The only tool that properly does a good job removing banding noise is Topaz DeNoise. I do have lots of different raw converters and Photoshop plugins that does a better job than ASP on this matter. Actually, even new the OnOne suite has now a very good noise reduction solution, and with it's fast and improved RAW file browsing and handling is actually the preferred solution for many of my images. The reason being ASP's poor noise handling. I do use ASP for all my sorting, deleting and rating, but without a decent noise solution it is useless for many of my images.
Regarding the banding noise I have in the deep shadows, the Perfectly "Useless" Noise Reduction actually makes that noise more visible than it is without it. This was a surprise, as it reduces most other noise, even the details I want to preserve...
A one-size-fits-all solution that only works with global settings isn't something that's good enough in 2015. When every competitor system and plugin is light years ahead of what we have inside ASP, I think Corel has to put some serious resources into getting something better into it's software. If the solution is to (do what Corel always does) license someone elses solution, then Topaz DeNoise should be the perfect match, and it is the only solution I have found to handle banding noise properly. But if Corel is considering to develop something themselves, use DeNoise as the model.
Something has to be done in this respect, and the sooner the better. If Corel has ambitions of being a serious competitor for raw files, a proper noise reduction solution is a must. The benefits of a decent and good noise solution could be jointly shared by both ASP and PSP...