Are your record surfaces as silent as CDs?

I think when you're listening to LPs surface noise comes with the territory and it's something you live with. Unless it's gravel road extreme our mind largely tunes it out. An odd thing I found when I upgraded my cartridge is that it didn't seem to pick up dust the way my old budget model did. That one I had to clean off once per side of a record.

Line contact styli have lower groove noise than elliptical/spherical. 

Technically, vinyl can only give you about 60db S/N exclusive of the pre-amp (although different vinyls these days provide somewhat better that that), and CDs at least 95db+, so CDs will always be quieter.  A properly designed phono pre will, itself, be quieter then the record, so you shouldn't  have any additive noise.

However, with a lot of the newer turntables these days having internal ADC/DAC systems to get you that USB connection that can't be switched out of the way to get your a direct out RCA feed, then your S/N is going to be based on the turntable's electronics, not the vinyl. 

Similar to the analog vs digital approach to sound reproduction & generally, CD’s either work w/ virtually no surface noise or they don’t work at all & records always have some surface noise from the penny on the head shell department store model to the very best. Of course both can sound great depending on a multitude of factors but CD’s / digitally sourced music wins every time in this category. 
 

I have to admit that even though I have a really nice Basis turntable/ arm combo for many years & lots of records, since I got an Innuos server & Qobuz, I’ve gotten very lazy & don’t play much vinyl now. 

A vinyl collection is a must for me. I also have a couple thousand of them but 80% bought used, mostly back in the seventies. Used record stores were huge back then. I played some way too many times since then for some not to have some type of background noises in them. I catalog those as slightly noisy and they are not bothersome to me at all. Any that I list as little noisy, I usually look for a NM copy unless the price is unrealistic. If so I look for a new repress. All that to say that records do wear over time as it is the nature of the vinyl. In the end I am so glad to now have CDs and streaming to take the load off playing records over and over like I used to. My ratio is vinyl 10%, CDs 10%, streaming 80%. Meaning my vinyl collection will now remain nearly perfect for what's left of my life. I enjoy the quality of the 3 medias equally and use streaming the most to discover new music. Life in the audio world has never been better.