Silence Skipping – Adjustable Silence Duration
tl;dr:
I think it would be wonderful to have an adjustable min…max time consideration setting for silence skipping.
Detail:
Although very useful, most podcasts sound odd and rushed with the current silence skipping setting. I think having an adjustable meter that allows a user to define the minimum amount of acceptable silence before skipping occurs would be wonderful.
It would allow for podcasts with this setting to sound more natural while also removing those unnecessary silences that often occur between commercials, chapters, etc.
It may also satisfy these posts:
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/35799070-shorten-the-skip-silence-trigger-duration-so-that
https://podcastaddict.uservoice.com/forums/211997-general/suggestions/17267549-skip-silence-attack-control
You can test this new feature right now by joining the Beta on the play store app page, then by updating the app.
You can then change the skip silence aggressiveness either globally or per podcast. Please contact me if you have any questions (Settings/Feedback)
Thanks
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Clint Porter commented
I don't know if this helps you code it, but it seems to me part of the problem is that quieter files get more aggressive trimming than louder files do (I'm not talking about the loudness of the background noise; I know that's a confounding factor no matter what.) It seems like if you could measure something like the RMS loudness of the file first, you could use that to set the gate at a more optimal level per file.
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Nigel Coldwell commented
I vaguley remember that this was implemented... Did i make that up?
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John Jones commented
This is the thing that keeps me making me switch from Podcast Addict back to Pocket Casts again - super essential + critical!! It makes a huge difference in the experience of listening to a podcast
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nicklear9 commented
Having recently tried out Pocket Casts - the better Skip Silence on that is the one thing I now feel I can't live with on Podcast Addict, which I otherwise love. In Podcast Addict the skip silence is too strong and un-usable for me. In Pocket Casts, it has three strenghts, all of which sound natural.
I see this request has been posted a few times over the years and always been denied - is there a reason for that? Could you give Pocket Casts a brief look at in this regard for a podcast that needs Skip Silence and see what I mean?
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Mentor Palokaj commented
This would be great. Ad an advanced (paid?) feature you could add more parameters like "skip silence of x seconds" and "make any silence under y seconds 1 second".
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Anonymous commented
This is absolutely true. I think silence skipping has an immense potential, but it's nearly unusable the way it's implemented right now. Podcasts do sound rushed, bizarre even. It breakes the natural speech cadence. There's definitely a lot to improve in this area, creating a truly smart algorithm that applies adaptative silence shortening based on variables like silence length, frequency.. I don't know