Sebastian made some good points. There is a considerable variation among RAW software programs. Usually the most recent camera manufacturer's RAW program is the best, simply because they designed the RAW software algorithm in the first place.

As he said as well, RAW is not a crutch for less than careful attention to detail, exposure, white balance etc. when taking the photo in the first place.

As I indicated earlier, you need to have a very good eye, a light touch on the adjustments, and a thorough knowledge of the effect of every change on every other area of your photo. Most changes in RAW will affect the visibility of noise, tonal quality both positively and negatively, and detail. This is also why I find that with some photos it is better to make some changes globally in RAW and then move it to jpeg to take advantage of the ability to make a change selectively to a small part of the same photo.

I will repeat also that it is possible to make your photos worse rather than better using RAW processing, if you do not have a good eye for seeing the effect of changes on the photo, as well as a thorough knowledge of the format and the inter-related nature of all changes. Some of this is true for jpeg editing as well, but the changes in RAW are more major in nature since you are closer to dealing with the original data from the processor.

Ronnoco