The first bit is an undoubted truism, and with a good marketing strategy (which was the case at the time), the general public will easily buy into the 'latest craze' and follow fashion, which certainly happened then, regardless of any real benefits that CD had.
The latter I also tend to agree with, as many of those are simply today's followers of fashion, and who aren't particularly sonically discerning, the same as many were in the mid 1980s/early 90s, when we had 'the revelation' of CD. Don't get me wrong, I *like* CD and have never had a major problem with it, but I don't think it has ever represented the format that delivers the pinnacle of audiophile sound quality.
However, there's another important aspect to consider in all of this... And it's that many who jumped onto the CD bandwagon, back in the day, NEVER got to hear vinyl at its best, or for that matter, turntables.
The simple fact is that poor set-up of turntables (and their constituent components) combined with some utterly crap phonostages, especially those contained within budget integrated amps, which many people used back then, was as much responsible for them not hearing vinyl at its best [indeed the complete opposite, as the deficiencies of the electronics in question simply served to highlight many of its weaknesses] and turning to CD, which less capable amplifiers then were 'kinder' to.
The fact is, and this is still true today, it's always been much easier and far less expensive to design and build a decent line-only amplifier, to facilitate good quality CD/digital replay (or before CD, radio and tape), than it is an amplifier and/or phonostage that does proper justice to vinyl. Moreover, how many of us, back in the day were playing records that were dirty and/or in poor condition? Therefore, how could we have ever hoped to hear them properly??
However, the fact that you have to work harder and spend more to hear vinyl at its best, isn't the fault of vinyl. Therefore, neither is it an excuse to condemn it, or claim that CD/digital is sonically superior, *if* you haven't heard what vinyl can truly do in the best set-ups, which essentially is Fremer's position.
And from considerable experience of speaking to people and listening to their systems over the years, it's patently obvious that many have NEVER heard vinyl at its best, and that often the worst of its detractors are those who've never had the ability or wherewithal to experience that, and hear firsthand how it can make recorded music sound so believable and real, and in a way that simply isn't possible from CD or any other digital music format.
I often get the feeling that 'audiophiles' back in the day who so readily adopted CD, and made it their music format of choice, did so not necessarily because of reasons pertaining to sound quality, but because to them it made more technical sense, backed up by the measurements it produced being more 'accurate', and therefore it appealed more to their objectivist mindset...
And for those folk, no matter how many times they hear a better sound from vinyl, they'll never be able to rationalise it with their scientific belief system, and admit it
I've always said that sometimes the science gets in the way of the music....
Marco.