1st, it is definitely not true that tubes "always" hiss or are noisy in other ways. Completely untrue. It IS true that it is easier/cheaper to make a quiet SS preamp than a tubes one. However, my new Supratek unit is absolutely dead silent and so are many other good ones. Battery-powered tubed units from Dodd & Welborne may be the quietest linestages, period (I'm not sure, but maybe).
2nd, tubes used "at the source" are *usually* nothing but an buffer stage. IOW, the tubes are doing but impedance-matching and are, in my view at least, theoretically redundant. And, other than a slight "softening", sonic effects seem to be rather restrained.
3rd, why must the myths of "bad" tube bass persist? It's always a matter of the speaker interface. Tubes, push-pull or single-ended, with the right speakers (and this doesn't mean just highly-sensitive speakers) can produce the best bass you'll ever hear. Nothing at all inherent to the topology that prevents that. The highest damping factor simply isn't always best - over-damping that truncates decay is not a good thing unless your definition of good is the hardest bass, not the most musically truthful bass. I've heard these differences myself on many amp/speaker combos.
Wow, I'm sounding like a tube N*zi, which I'm not - I just hate the perpetuation of these myths.
As for solid-state and tubed preamps "theoretically" sounding the same, that's a non-statement if I've ever heard one.
