Quality Gates
Quality gates work at two stages: search-time filtering (which releases are eligible to grab) and post-download evaluation (whether a completed download is good enough to import).
Search-Time Filters
Section titled “Search-Time Filters”Configure in Settings > Quality.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Grab Floor | Minimum quality in MB/hour. Releases below this are filtered out of search results and RSS matches. Set to 0 to disable. Default: 0. |
| Protocol Preference | Prefer usenet, torrent, or none (no preference). When set, results from the preferred protocol are ranked higher. Default: none. |
| Min Seeders | Minimum seeders for torrent releases. Releases with fewer seeders are filtered out. Set to 0 to disable. Default: 0. |
| Reject Words | Comma-separated words. Any release title containing these words is excluded. Example: abridged, sample, demo. |
| Required Words | Comma-separated words. Release titles must contain at least one of these words to be eligible. Leave empty to allow all. |
| Search Immediately | When adding a new book, immediately search for it instead of waiting for the next scheduled search cycle. Default: off. |
| Monitor for Upgrades | When adding a new book, automatically enable upgrade monitoring. Default: off. |
How Filtering Works
Section titled “How Filtering Works”When you search for a book (manually or via the scheduled search job), results pass through this pipeline:
- Blacklisted releases are removed (by info hash)
- Multi-part Usenet posts are removed
- Reject words filter removes matching titles
- Required words filter removes non-matching titles
- Min seeders filter removes under-seeded torrents
- Grab floor filter removes low-quality releases
- Remaining results are ranked by quality (MB/hour), with protocol preference as a tiebreaker
The same pipeline applies to RSS feed matches.
Quality Tiers
Section titled “Quality Tiers”Search results display a quality badge based on MB/hour:
| Tier | MB/hour | Color |
|---|---|---|
| Low | < 30 | Red |
| Fair | 30–79 | Yellow |
| Good | 80–199 | Green |
| High | 200–399 | Blue |
| Lossless | 400+ | Purple |
For spoken word, “Good” (80–199 MB/hr) is the sweet spot. Higher tiers are typically lossless or very high bitrate recordings.
Post-Download Quality Gate
Section titled “Post-Download Quality Gate”After a download completes, Narratorr probes the audio files and makes a decision:
| Decision | When | What Happens |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-import | New download has better MB/hour than existing | Proceeds to import |
| Auto-reject | Quality is same or worse than existing | Files deleted, release blacklisted |
| Hold for review | Narrator mismatch, duration off by >15%, no quality data to compare, or probe failure | Held in pending_review status for your decision |
Hold Reasons
Section titled “Hold Reasons”| Reason | Meaning |
|---|---|
narrator_mismatch | The download’s narrator tag doesn’t match the book’s expected narrator |
duration_delta | Duration differs from expected by more than 15% — could indicate an abridged version or wrong content |
no_quality_data | No existing quality data to compare against (first download for this book) |
probe_failed | Couldn’t read the audio files to determine quality |
Reviewing Held Downloads
Section titled “Reviewing Held Downloads”On the Activity page, downloads in pending_review show Approve and Reject buttons:
- Approve — proceeds with import
- Reject — deletes files and blacklists the release
The quality gate data (MB/hour comparison, narrator info, duration delta) is shown alongside the review buttons to help you decide.