Lo-fi and the way home recording has changed from the 80s cassette era to the contemporary DAW era is a story about the same aesthetic applied to completely different technical circumstances.

The cassette era was genuinely constrained. The equipment was limited; the recordings were limited; the distribution was limited. The lo-fi was real. The artists working in that context were making the best records they could with what they had, and the lo-fi was an artifact of that limitation.

The contemporary DAW era has eliminated most of those technical constraints. You can make a technically excellent recording with a consumer laptop and a $100 microphone. The lo-fi choices are now almost always choices — you're opting in to a set of aesthetic constraints rather than being constrained by actual limitations.

This shift doesn't make contemporary lo-fi less legitimate. But it does change its meaning. When lo-fi is a choice, it's making a statement. When it's a necessity, it's just how things sound. Understanding which is which is part of evaluating a record correctly.