Backing up CDs with EAC + lame 3.96.1 aps to DVDs is almost perfect, because it serves as a backup, but can also conveniently be played back on most standalone DVD players.

However, many albums has no silence between tracks, and must be backed up as an image+cue sheet, in order to be properly recreated if the original CD breaks. Also, when played back, an mp3 image will make no annoying pauses where it shouldn't.

On the other hand, having each song as an mp3 file is much more convenient, as you can jump directly to songs. Many standalone DVD players cannot search in mp3 files, which makes this even more important (fortunately, my player can). If you are the kind of person who always play your albums from beginning to end, it wouldn't matter of course...

So what I am looking for is a tool that can scan, preferable directly the CD, or the ripped wav+cue file, and detect whether it has digital silence between each song (e.g. at least 0.5 seconds). If it has, I do a normal song by song backup, otherwise an image backup.

You're making backups of DVD's (CD's) you've never heard? Oups! I'm doing it as I grab every track alone and when they are connected (eg. live shot) I put the together in a wave editor.
Yes, you can scan the CD if there are gaps (F4 in EAC) but not all the CD's have gaps and although they have you must test them for silence (F3).
I don't think there's tool which can do all these thing without your help & decisions...

I own a rather large CD collection which I want to backup. Having started once earlier with the same project, I realized that there were many albums that had *some* connected tracks, which I hadn't noticed before. (e.g., Santana albums). Albums which have all tracks connected, like most Pink Floyd, are easier to remember.

I was thinking of a more automatic way to do it. As being a programmer, I am thinking of making such a tool. I guess looking at the CDex source code would be a good starting point, or is there a better one?

I think we all would be grateful if you do such a thing... I don't so useful tool in some program. Maybe anyone knows?

Edit: I don't konow about so useful tool... Forgive me for my poor english.

I use this:
http://mp3splt.sourceforge.net/

I use the linux commandline version, so I don't know if and how the windows version works.

Thanks, ivanova! This seems to be exactly the tool I was looking for. I may even make an automation tool to make it work together with EAC. I'll report back.

Both in CDEx and Audiograbber (and possibly other rippers), you can simply by choosing just the starting track of the line continuosly linked tracks, and pasting the end number of frames of the last track (but you will not mark it to rip) get linked tracks just as one large one, but of course the disadvantage is you have just one tag space for in fact more song names, which is not sufficent, especially in long track names ...