Surface Noice, yubes and solid state

I see no reason why that would be true, unless:

-- The surface noise is masked by the tube hiss of a poor quality tube device, or

-- The tube phono stage, or other tube device in the path, somehow acts as a dynamic range expander, or

-- Somehow solid state devices tend to act as dynamic range compressors.

I doubt that any of these scenarios are true, certainly in the case of quality equipment that presumably has some semblance of accuracy.

Regards,
-- Al