daveb867

maybe increasing the glossy samples of the a&d material that gives you the problem would eliminate it, although this will increase your render times.

also if you are using max 08/09 which i believe you are if you are using p/graphic exposure, replace your area lights with sky portals, assign a blackbody shader to each sky portal and then they become area lights with kelvin temperature controls. from my experience the sky portals are a lot less noisy than standard area lights.

hope some of this helps or maybe i have misunderstood