Lo-Fi Recording: A Historical Exploration of the Sound and Genre

Abstract

This paper explores the history of the term “lo-fi”. Originating in the 1950s, lo-fi was considered the inverse of hi-fi, which was an acronym for high fidelity. Hi-fi represents sound recording and monitoring that accurately captures and reproduces acoustic sound. The two primary standards for hi-fi were bandwidth and SNR. Prior to the 1980s, lo-fi was limited to a sonic description of recordings with limited bandwidth and unfavorable SNR. Genres such as home recording, DIY, and outsider music had lo-fi characteristics, in large part due to the recording process used. The association between lo-fi and the aforementioned genres manifested into lo-fi becoming its own genre in the 1990s. The term lo-fi became interchangeable with home recording, DIY, outsider music, and slacker rock. However, with lo-fi’s decaying popularity in the twenty-first century, the term went through another metamorphosis. In the 2010s. This time, lo-fi was associated with artificial vinyl sounds, hip-hop beats, and YouTube livestreams.