I happened to come across this recently, which is a short article about how One Night Alone Live was recorded by one of Prince's engineers, Scottie P. It seems to be from an archive from 2003, I can't remember anyone posting about it before, so sorry it has been posted previously:

http://www.livesoundint.c.../clean.php

One criticism of ONA Live was that it lacked some atmosphere from the crowd; from this article it appears that was exactly the way Prince wanted it.

metalorange said:

The sound on this CD is horrible, flat, weak etc...
Even a bootleg sounds better.

I loved it. Esp. since it was free from the club. Too bad things like that will probably never happen again.

pkidwell said:

Yours was free!?!?

I paid $100 for that and ONA Piano CD when I was a member.

(Ooh, it's like 2002 all over again)

Enigmoid said:

It was free AFTER he paid the money up front for them

Enigmoid said:

Yeah, it was $100 for 4 cds - the 3 ONA Live and the ONA piano. Although also that year through the club I got excellent seats at 2 shows, plus we got a chance to download C-NOTE at the end of the year (and Xpectation, as I recall...)

Interesting article, but he doesn't mention that if it went straight to DAT, there were quite a few overdubs aftwards.