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

These settings are spread across the Search and General settings tabs, not a single Quality page.

Quality

Configure in Settings > Search (Quality section).

Setting	Description
Grab Floor (MB/hr Grab Minimum)	Minimum quality in MB/hour. Releases below this are filtered out of search results and RSS matches. Set to `0` to disable. Default: 0.
Min Seeders	Minimum seeders for torrent releases. Releases with fewer seeders are filtered out. Set to `0` to disable. Default: 1.
Min Download Size (MB)	Minimum download size in MB. Filters out tracker-test uploads and single-track previews. Set to `0` to disable. Default: 0.
Max Download Size (GB)	Maximum download size in GB. Releases above this are filtered out. Set to `0` to disable. Default: 5 (not unlimited).

Filtering

Configure in Settings > Search (Filtering section).

Setting	Description
Languages	Multi-select. Releases in unselected languages are excluded; results with no detected language pass through. Deselect all to disable. Default: English.
Minimum Duration (minutes)	Filters out releases shorter than this — useful for dropping promo excerpts and TTS samples. Set to `0` to disable. Default: 0.
Reject Words	Comma-separated words. A release is excluded if any of these words is matched. Defaults out of the box to `Virtual Voice, Free Excerpt, Sample, Behind the Scenes, Abridged`.
Required Words	Comma-separated words. A release must contain at least one of these words to be eligible. Empty by default (allows all).

Reject Words and Required Words are matched (with word-boundary matching) against the release title/name, author, and narrator fields — not just the title string.

Search

Configure in Settings > Search.

Setting	Description
Search Priority	`Audio Quality` ranks higher-bitrate releases first (may pull full-cast or alternate-narrator editions); `Narrator Accuracy` ranks releases matching the book’s metadata narrator first (may accept lower quality). Default: Narrator Accuracy.
Protocol Preference	Prefer `usenet`, `torrent`, or `none` (no preference). When set, results from the preferred protocol are ranked higher — it affects ordering only and does not exclude results. Default: No Preference (`none`).

When a New Book Is Added

Configure in Settings > General (When a New Book Is Added section).

Setting	Description
Search Immediately	When adding a new book, immediately search for it instead of waiting for the next scheduled search cycle. Default: off.

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 or GUID)
Multi-part Usenet posts are removed
Reject words filter removes matching releases
Required words filter removes non-matching releases
Ebook-only format filter drops EPUB/AZW3/PDF/MOBI-only results
Min seeders filter removes under-seeded torrents
Grab floor filter removes low-quality releases
Min download size filter removes too-small releases
Max download size filter removes too-large releases
Results are partitioned by the language filter
Remaining results are ranked by quality (MB/hour), with protocol preference as a tiebreaker

The same pipeline applies to RSS feed matches.

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

After a download completes, Narratorr probes the audio files and makes a decision:

Decision	When	What Happens
Auto-import	First download for a book (no existing files), or a new download with better MB/hour than existing	Proceeds to import. A first download is imported without a quality comparison, provided no hold reasons fired.
Auto-reject	Quality is same or worse than existing	Release is blacklisted and a fresh search is started. Files are deleted only when Delete after import is enabled (off by default).
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

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
`imported_book_replacement`	This book is already imported; the new grab is held so you can confirm the replacement
`unhandled_error`	An unexpected error occurred during evaluation

Reviewing Held Downloads

On the Activity page, downloads in pending_review show three buttons: Approve, Reject, and Reject & Search:

Approve — proceeds with import
Reject — dismisses the held download only. It does not blacklist the release and does not trigger a new search.
Reject & Search — blacklists the release and kicks off a new search for the book.

Files are only deleted when Delete after import is enabled in Import settings (off by default); otherwise rejecting leaves the downloaded files in place.

The quality gate data (MB/hour comparison, narrator info, duration delta) is shown alongside the review buttons to help you decide.