When Lightroom imports a RAW DNG it seems to apply an additional tone curve behind the scenes which makes the resulting image appear very contrasty compared to what the Vuescan preview shows.
Any suggestions on how I get a more neutral starting point in Lightroom?
When I hit ^N to convert the first step Negative Lab Pro does is replace the profile with one of the Negative Lab Pro profiles. It replaces whatever profile Lightroom assigned. Are you seeing something else?
Or are you talking about scanning positives or prints?
sorry for the late reply - talking about positives in this instance.