Splasm Software Discussions

I regularly have silent gaps in the books being imported into Audiobook Builder on my MacBook. My latest analysis shows that 9.7% of the audiobooks I have brought into Audiobook Builder have blank sections making them unusable. These blank sections range from a couple minutes to a couple hours. Unfortunately they are only detected after the complete process of bringing the CD into Audiobook and then transfered into iTunes. I first discovered this problem while listening to a book and then being confronted with silence 3/4 the way through the book!

I now regularly complete the import of the book into iTunes then do a manual fast audio scan of the book by using the cursor to drag quickly through the audio. A valid audio track produces a noise of gibberish in which a silent gap can be detected.

I would prefer an automatic process. Can you incorporate an active audio track monitor within Audiobook Builder that monitors the quality of the audio being read from the CD? The feature set that this monitor could incorporate may be:

1 - optional activation: Allow those that do not experience this problem to turn off the feature.
2 - user settable gap duration: Allow the user to determine the duration of silence they can tolerate, perhaps from 10 seconds in steps to 10 minutes.
3- user settable actions: Allow the user to select notification of silent gaps but allow Audiobook Builder to continue processing the CD or have Audiobook Builder abort the reading process.

Thanks.

Note: My initial investigation into this problem suggests that it is a class problem with slot type CD/DVD readers on laptop Mac computers. The problem has been reported while ripping music CDs. The CDs that exhibit this problem generally have scratches or other indications of abuse but occasionally there is no sign of damage. One workaround reported is to use a third party external CD/DVD drive.