What’s better than a very quick and very simple ringtone maker? A ringtone maker that’s shaped like an iPhone, of course. That way you never ever get confused, and you never forget which of your 10 phones you’re making your ringtone for. PocketMac contacted JAiB a little while ago with a review license for their cool little ringtone maker, and I took them up on the offer since I was searching for a ringtone creator on OSX. I used to use Audacity on Windows to export my files into the .m4r format and manually import them into iTunes. RingtoneStudio 2 does that all automatically on the Mac — but is it worth the $29.95 asking price?
Ridiculously easy ringtone creation
I’ll be honest with you, this program is so quick and simple that the review for it doesn’t even really warrant any titles for the paragraphs. All you have to do is load up the application, drag an unprotected video, sound, or iTunes file into RingtoneStudio, and you’re ready to edit. The program presents you with the waveform of the file and the accompanying video (if applicable), so you can click and drag along to highlight the portion to crop for your ringtone. If you need to fine tune your selection, one click on either end of the highlighted portion allows you to adjust the start or end.
You can select up to 40 seconds, and there are markers right inside the program to tell you exactly where you’re at in the file, as well as how many seconds you’ve selected so far. Once you’ve picked what you’d like to hear, you can tick off the checkboxes if you’d like the sound to fade in or fade out at the start of the ringtone, or adjust the volume for the entire file as needed. After that, all you need to do is click on the “CREATE” button and your ringtone will be on its merry way to your iTunes ringtone folder, ready to be transferred on your next sync.
I had no problems with the software as I used it, and the ringtone creation process is as quick as it is dead simple. The only thing I’d probably want from the software is an option for the window to stay “always on top”. This would make it a bit easier to drag files into the program, since I run almost everything full-screen on my Mac, but don’t have the real estate to support multiple windows.
Is it worth it?
The bottom line is that most any solution is better than the Apple solution of buying a song once and then paying a second time to turn it into a ringtone. RingtoneStudio 2’s only downside is that you’ll need to create a fair number of ringtones before you actually save money by using it. At $29.95, it’s certainly you’d have to buy 13-14 ringtones from Apple (I’m trying to account for tax) before RingtoneStudio 2 becomes the cheaper option. When you also consider the fact that you can create iPhone ringtones for free in Garageband, or with Audacity on Windows, you’re really paying for convenience here. PocketMac does offer a 90-day money back guarantee, though, so you’ll have three months to see if the program will end up paying for itself. The price still seems a bit steep, but the convenience might be worth it for people who enjoy switching ringtones fairly often.
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You can buy or try RingtoneStudio 2 by downloading it from the PocketMac website — and they’re also giving out free iPhone cases for the first 500 orders, although I don’t see any way to find out how many orders have been processed. There is an extra $5 USD charge for download protection at checkout, but you can take it off and still benefit from three re-downloads of the software should you lose it. Thanks to Tim at Pocketmac for clearing that up.
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TAGS: iPhone
