jmtd → log → 8-bit

On Yesterday's Mary Anne Hobbs radio show she debuted a new track by Squarepusher, "Vortrack [Fracture Remix]", which you can now watch/listen to on YouTube:

This track really grabbed my attention. Later that day you you could buy it in a variety of formats and quality levels on Squarepusher's website.

One of the format/quality options was "8-bit Lossless WAV", which I thought was a joke, a poke in the eye of audiophiles. I was aware that he likely used some 8-bit instruments/equipment to write the tracks, but surely it was mixed in a more modern environment, and resampling down to 8-bit would result in something that sounded like mush.

But it seems the jokes on me; I bought the track and it's seemingly indistinguishable to the audio track on that YouTube video. And it really is 8-bit:

Input #0, wav, from 'Vortrack-001-Squarepusher-Vortrack (Fracture Remix).wav':
  Duration: 00:08:02.99, bitrate: 705 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: pcm_u8 ([1][0][0][0] / 0x0001),
    44100 Hz, 2 channels, u8, 705 kb/s

It even — losslessly — compressed down to a bitrate lower than a typical MP3:

Input #0, flac, from 'Vortrack-001-Squarepusher-Vortrack (Fracture Remix).flac':
  Duration: 00:08:02.99, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 313 kb/s
    Stream #0:0: Audio: flac, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16 (8 bit)