Has anyone ever tested the "Delete leading and trailing silent blocks" option in EAC (found in EAC Options(F9)->Extraction)?

The ping.be tutorial recommens we disable, it because we're interested in generating identical copies of the original tracks.

But since the silent parts at the beginning/end drive me crazy (and I use mp3Trim to remove them), I'm thinking of going with this option in EAC.

I'm interested in its efficiency (is it too aggresive or gentle with the silent parts? does it suck?) so if anyone out there has tried it and can tell me about it, I'm all ears.

PS: Also, while we're in the issue, have you stumbled upon any good freeware silence-removers lately? I'm trying to find whether there's something better than mp3Trim (the free -not paid- version) that I'm currently using.

This removes only digital silence. Dithered or analog silence is left.
Also, this only removes whole block, thus a little bit of silence (<1/75 s) is left.
I don't think it's what you need.

I use that option, and works fine for me, only removes digital silence, in some noisy albums (w/analog silence)does not work as I would, then I go with Sound Forge and I remove the lead and trailing silent blocks manually. You can remove silents blocks with WavGain, you can enable an option that remove analog silence below -60 db, that option works fine with that albums that have analog noise in leading and trailing parts.
By the way, mp3Trim is necessary to remove silence at the end of every mp3 file created with LAME 3.90.3 --aps, mp3Trim always remove 0,13 secs from the end of these mp3. I have't find a better app yet, by the way,I use mp3TrimPro.

I use the silence removal option in EAC to remove digital silence (since that's all it handles) and then use WavTrim on the ripped files to remove analog silence below -72 dB. It works fine for me!