Feature description:
The Skip Silence (as far as I can tell) feature currently skips all silences completely, even very short silences. My idea is to add two settings to set thresholds for how the Skip Silence feature works…
The first setting would allow a user to set a threshold for how long a period of silence needs to be in order for it to be skipped. For example, a “Silence Threshold” setting of “2 seconds” would mean that silences that only last 1.5 second are not skipped, while silences lasting longer than 2 second will be skipped as normal.
The second setting would allow a user to set an amount of silence that will be not skipped (Apologies, I don’t have a nice user-friendly name for this at the moment, maybe something like “Keep X seconds of silence”?). Basically, if there is a period of silence lasting 30 seconds that will be skipped, this value could be set to something like 2 seconds, which would result in only 28 seconds of the silence being skipped, with 2 seconds of silence being left in.
These two settings can be used in conjunction with each other to achieve a effect where, as an example, all silences that are longer than 5 seconds will effectively be truncated down to 1 second, and any silences shorter than 5 seconds will be left alone and not skipped.
Problem solved:
I’ve read in some other threads that the Skip Silence feature is intended for audio books, but it incidentally has been very nice for skipping long periods of silence that often separate a bonus track on the last track of an album.
Problem 1 is: the Skip Silence feature currently skips the silence so completely that the bonus track kicks in very abruptly with no audible separation. Allowing a setting to leave a second or two of silence would allow these long periods of silence (sometimes minutes of silence) to be skipped, but also leave in a second or two of breathing room.
Problem 2 is: the Skip Silence feature currently skips even very short periods of silence that is can often ruin the pacing of audio tracks with intended short periods of silence, for example some albums with dialog or skit tracks where speaking and/or musical hits are sparse and separated, but the timing of them is important for musical or humor effect. Allowing a setting to set the threshold for how long a silence needs to be in order to be skipped will allow users to, at their own discretion, avoid these shorter intentional silences from being ruined.
I have an example track that I can share in which the Skip Silence feature is very useful due to a long silence separating the bonus track, but also negatively affects the bonus track’s intro due to how aggressive/sensitive the skipping is.
Brought benefits:
I believe this would make the Skip Silence feature useful for more use cases beyond the intended audio book use case, and allow users to fine-tune the behavior to their own preference. It would certainly make listening to albums with silence-separated bonus tracks more enjoyable to listen to, while not negatively affecting the original use case of audio book listening.
Other application solutions:
Not provided
Additional description and context:
I’ve attached two audacity screenshots the demonstrate the ultimate effect my feature request is hoping for. It is focused on a large gap of silence leading into a bonus track. The red sections I added to show sections of the song that the the Skip Silence feature will actually skip.
You’ll notice the bit around 6:40 where there are very short bits of silence that currently get skipped. A “Silence Threshold” setting of 5 seconds could prevent these short bits of silence from being skipped, as shown in the second screenshot.
You’ll also notice the large periods of silence currently are skipped to completely that there is no breathing room while listening. While listening to this track with the current Skip Silence feature, itsoundslikewhatasentencelookslikewithoutanyspaces. A “Leave X Seconds of Silence” setting of 2 could prevent this collapse and make it a much more enjoyable experience while listening, while still skipping almost all of the silence. You can see this in the 2nd screenshot around 5:30, 6:00, and 6:30.
I hope this helps explain what I’m talking about. 
Screenshots / Mockup:
