Vin 9V, Vout 3V, 1 to 2mA load.
I looked at LT3470 among many others. No good. At light loads, it operates in burst mode (like most of them). It's on for a few switching cycles, then shuts down to save power for a few dozen or hundreds of cycles, rinse, repeat. Those on/off bursts have their own frequency which falls in the audio band regardless of the actual switching frequency. The output inductor will inductively couple that audio band noise into anything nearby, including the ground plane. Low level enough not to be a problem for many unity-gain (or even attenuation) circuits (headphone amp in a phone for example), but becomes audible for low signal level with tens of dB of added gain.
I need continuous switching, no interruptions, at above 30kHz or so, so any switching noise can never drop within the audio band.
MAX17555 comes closest to what I need, but it's a nightmare to hand solder... 2x2mm package.