Lo-fi (also typeset as lofi or low-fi; short for low fidelity) is a music or production quality in which elements usually regarded as imperfections in the context of a recording or performance are present, sometimes as a deliberate stylistic choice.

Traditionally, lo-fi has been characterized by the inclusion of elements normally viewed as undesirable in professional contexts, such as misplayed notes, environmental interference, or phonographic imperfections (degraded audio signals, tape hiss, and so on).

Although "lo-fi" has been in the cultural lexicon for approximately as long as "high fidelity", WFMU disc jockey William Berger is usually credited with popularizing the term in 1986.

[3] The perception of "lo-fi" has been relative to technological advances and the expectations of music listeners, causing the rhetoric and discourse surrounding the term to shift numerous times throughout its history.

"[10] In 2017, About.com's Anthony Carew argued that the term "lo-fi" had been commonly misused as a synonym for "warm" or "punchy" when it should be reserved for music that "sounds like it's recorded onto a broken answering-machine".

[18] Writing in 2006, Tammy LaGorce of The New York Times identified "bedroom pop" as "bloglike music that tries to make the world a better place through a perfect homemade song".

[21] Jenessa Williams of The Forty-Five called "bedroom pop" almost synonymous with "lo-fi", having been traditionally used as "a flattering way to dress up homespun demos and slacker aesthetics" before being recontextualized in later years as "midwestern emo without the thrashing; Soundcloud rap without the braggadocio.

[25] Recordings deemed unprofessional or "amateurish" are usually with respect to performance (out-of-tune or out-of-time notes) or mixing (audible hiss, distortion, or room acoustics).

[38] Pitchfork writer Mark Richardson credited Smiley Smile with inventing "the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop that would later propel Sebadoh, Animal Collective, and other characters.

The album included many of his best-known songs, as well as a spoken-word track ("Intro") in which he teaches the listener about recording flaws for an egg hunt-type game he calls "Sounds of the Studio".

[44] Among other notable examples, writers of The Wire credit Skip Spence's Oar (1969) as "a progenitor of both the loner/stoner and lo-fi movements", adding that the album "would not find a real audience for decades.

"[46] Record Collector's Jamie Atkins wrote in 2018 that many lo-fi acts would be indebted to the reverb-saturated sound of the Beach Boys' 1970 song "All I Wanna Do".

[47] Pitchfork writer Madison Bloom crowned Peter Ivers, a 1970s Los Angeles musician, as "the weirdo king of bedroom pop, decades before the genre existed.

"[48] In 2016, Billboard writer Joe Lynch described David Bowie's Hunky Dory (1971) as "pretty much the blueprint for every lo-fi indie pop album of the last 25 years", citing Ariel Pink as a descendant.

[49] Active since 1969, Stavely Makepeace, and their spinoff group Lieutenant Pigeon, were described by AllMusic's Richie Unterberger as creating "quirky, slightly lo-fi homemade production married to simple pop songs with heavy echoes of both '50s rock & roll and British novelty music.

[11] JW Farquhar's home-recorded 1973 album The Formal Female, according to critic Ned Raggett, could also be regarded as a forerunner to "any number of" independent lo-fi artists, including R. Stevie Moore and the underground Texas musician Jandek.

[61] In 1980, the Welsh trio Young Marble Giants released their only album, Colossal Youth, featuring stark instrumentation, including a primitive drum machine, and a decidedly "bedroom" aura.

[65] Adam Harper credits the outsider musicians Daniel Johnston and Jandek with "form[ing] a bridge between 1980s primitivism and the lo-fi indie rock of the 1990s.

[67] AllMusic wrote that Tall Dwarfs' home-recorded releases presaged "the rise of what was ultimately dubbed 'lo-fi' as the sound began to grow in prominence and influence over the course of the decades to follow.

Even though Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was well known for being fond of Johnston, K Records, and the Shaggs, there was a faction of indie rock that viewed grunge as a sell-out genre, believing that the imperfections of lo-fi was what gave the music its authenticity.

[72] He wrote: Alternately called lo-fi, referring to the rough sound quality resulting from such an approach, or D.I.Y., an acronym for "do it yourself", this tradition is distinguished by an aversion to state-of-the-art recording techniques.

[25] A reaction against both grunge and lo-fi, according to AllMusic, was chamber pop, which drew heavily from the rich orchestrations of Brian Wilson, Burt Bacharach, and Lee Hazlewood.

Writing in the book Hop on Pop (2003), Tony Grajeda said that by 1995, Rolling Stone magazine "managed to label every other band it featured in the first half [of the year] as somehow lo-fi.

For example, Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama (1995) contained a chapter titled "The Lo-Fi Top 10", which mentioned Hasil Adkins, the Velvet Underground, Half Japanese, Billy Childish, Beat Happening, Royal Trux, Sebadoh, Liz Phair, Guided By Voices, Daniel Johnston, Beck and Pavement.

According to Adam Harper: "In short, Unknown Legends bridges the interests of the [1980s] and the [Cassette Culture] Generation and those of [the 2000s], providing an early sketch, a portent – a 'leftfield blueprint', perhaps – of 00s movements like hauntology and hypnagogic pop".

[57] His most vocal advocate, Ariel Pink, had read Unknown Legends, and later recorded a cover version of one of the tracks included in a CD that came with the book ("Bright Lit Blue Skies").

[55] At the time of his label debut, Pink was viewed as a novelty act, as there were virtually no other contemporary indie artists with a similar retro lo-fi sound.

[83] Afterward, a type of music dubbed "hypnagogic pop" emerged among lo-fi and post-noise musicians who engaged with elements of cultural nostalgia, childhood memory, and outdated recording technology.

[84] Pink was frequently referred to as the "godfather" of hypnagogic, chillwave or glo-fi as new acts that were associated with him (aesthetically, personally, geographically, or professionally) attracted notice from critics.

[86] Adam Harper reflected in 2013 that there was a growing tendency among critics such as Simon Reynolds to overstate Pink's influence by failing to acknowledge predecessors such as R. Stevie Moore and the Cleaners from Venus' Martin Newell.