[ideamotor]

Somewhat is an understatement. I haven’t heard the rehearsals on the link (thanks) but i’ve heard a lot of live stuff (then and later) and it makes the recordings sound very thin and compressed. I think part of that was just The Times, so to speak; but it’s a minor travesty one of the best runs in pop music history (prince’s controversy to lovesexy) overlapped with those production trends.

[vr46]

It's the trade-off with Prince, as Susan Rogers explains in another comment I made, where he needed to get his ideas out first and foremost. There were a lot of stunning-sounding albums around at the time!