Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

Mine sounds good.
The Matrix / runout differs slightly from this and it's not a 180 gram pressing but 130 gram.

Clean is a good way to describe this package. The pressing, much like the jacket and inner sleeves are slick and devoid of unnecessary disturbances. Sound wise you can not get a cleaner pressing than this, the quiet parts stay dead quiet with no pops. And the jacket has a nice glossy feel. The only complaint I could have is that the mastering might be too clean. This music might want some more wildness in the dynamics. However that is mostly subjective. It just might give the impression of too clean and in turn sterile. But I digress, I can not imagine anyone disappointed in this release. Recommended purchase!

Update: What I think I meant with the tame sound is the stereo imaging. The instruments could possibly be more separated and be clearer in the mix. You could call this a very vertical sound as it has some deep bass, high end trebble and still with a solid mid range. But while the separation is not as wide as the sound is tall it might be a stylistic choice as some aspects like vocals are clearly meant to be distorted at times. But I still believe it could be done better as everything prefers to stay rather balanced and rarely accentuates a certain aspect like a guitar of vocals in the mastering.

Equipment used:
Rega RP1 with Rega Carbon cartridge
Cyrus 2 Amplifier
System Fidelity SF-3050 tower speakers
Custom made HQ speaker cables

Updated Equipment:
Nagaoka MP-110 cartridge