Mindful Audio Elements: Gears review

Today we will be looking at the new SFX library by Mindful Audio called Elements: Gears. The company is run by George Vlad who also worked Door Kickers, Imagine Nations, V: Dusk Falling, War for the Overworld and Dark Age Wars. Let’s see what this library has to offer.

Content

Elements: Gears is a collection of large gear, ratchet, cogwheel and other mechanical sounds and weight in approximately around 1,88 GB (uncompressed). There are around 2000 sounds available to play with in a multi take format (107 files altogether). All the files are also accompanied with a well-grounded metadata so you shouldn’t have any issues finding them in your decided software. I have tried searching the files using Soundly and Reapers internal media browser and both found what I was looking for.

The sounds are categorized depending on the type of the material. In there you will find materials such as metal, wood and plastic. In addition there are also contact microphone recordings which were recorded using JrF contact microphones but more on that later.

Sound quality

I have to say that the quality of the library is fantastic and the sounds are well edited. There are some noises here and there but you can’t really avoid those while recording. Some of the larger objects also include contact microphone recordings which is a nice addition. The sound of contact mic recordings is very hollow and on their own the sound isn’t that impressive. They are great for the layering thought.

The whole SFX library is delivered at 96 kHz and 24 bit mono files. It should be enough to pitch shift it to your likings. I particularly enjoyed the wooden samples especially when I pitched them down and got really interesting and usable sounds.

Overall the sounds are very usable and also very fun to play with once you know where you will be using them.

Example

This example was made using only Elements: Gears and no processing besides using EQ to filter out some frequencies.

Conclusion

Elements: Gears is a great library if you are in need of a gear like sounds. The price is a bit high* ($59 + VAT) but I think the quality and the content surely justifies it.

* In my case the price gets high due to the taxes. If you are from US or other country that doesn’t follow EU regulations the price will be $59 US which I would say is a fair price for the content and the quality you are getting.

Video credits:
UGears.es Model Tractor – Modelo Tractor
Jiguetes ucranianos
https://vimeo.com/159392465