2. why is that? If there is scene with very simple lighting, where direct elementare cleans extremely fast and most noise comes from complex materials (think of product shots), is there a much sense to shoot 32-64 direct light samples with each pass? I'll try to conduct some tests when i'll have more time to see if it can speed up rendering.
Setting the Light Sample Multiplier this low effectivly kills MIS, as at this point the whole image is being sampled with the same priority and usually noise generating parts of your image like Lights Dont get the attebtion they deserve.
You could (but shouldn't) go into Devel/experimental and turn off MIS completly.
That being said, corona tends to oversample edges on scenes with simple geometry. If you dont use DoF anothr approach would be to double or quadrouple Gi rays and boost LSM aswell, while keeping msi (Not to be confused with MIS) lower. This will massivly boost Rays/Sample and while your passes take longer, your image should be clean when you reach 15 passes.
That being said, everything is scene based anyways...