For several years now, the music industry has had quite a scam going. No, we’re not talking about the insane price of physical CDs. And no, we’re not talking about the fact that major label artists--the folks who actually did the work--make pennies on the dollar for the sale of those CDs. We’re talking about ringtones. iPhone users are luckier than most--iTunes will let you buy a ringtone for a mere 99 cents. Other cell carriers and plans can charge up to several dollars more. If you’re big into custom tones, that can add up fast. Ringer can help you quickly create your own iPhone ringtones from your existing media. No longer are you subject to iTunes’ sometimes spotty ringtone availability.

Whip up custom ringtones in a couple clicks.

Ringer is a simple app. All your editing happens in a single iTunes-style window, with your source list on the left, and a waveform of your selected song to the right. All it takes to create a ringtone is to drag the blue selection marker over the portion of audio you want to use (anything up to 30 seconds in length) and click Create. Ringer will downsample your audio (making the file size manageable while maintaining decent sound quality) and import it into iTunes automatically, where it will be ready for syncing to your iPhone.

The app offers some rudimentary playback controls for finding the right section of the song and also features a Preview button, which will play your current selection as a loop, so you can hear how it will sound coming out of your iPhone. There are also options to fade the beginning or ending of the clip and to add a short delay into the loop. Editing was simple enough, but there’s no way to zoom in to allow more precise editing of the start and end points, so those looking to create a seamless loop will have to rely on bit of trial and error to get their tones just right. And unlike iTunes’ ringtone feature, Ringer will work with any file you can open in QuickTime (including video files)--if you’re just dying for a ringtone of Mr. Pink from Reservoir Dogs, for example. Be warned: If you have any protected tracks from before iTunes went DRM-free, you’ll have to burn them to a CD and reimport them before you can use them with Ringer.

You can accomplish the same thing for free in iTunes or Garageband, but Ringer is simpler to use than either of those apps. And Ringer pays for itself quickly, compared to paying 99 cents a pop in the iTunes store. We just wish it was easier to make more fine-grained edits.

Ringer
COMPANY: Pixel Research Labs
CONTACT: www.pixelresearchlabs.com
PRICE: $15
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.5 or later
Simple operation. Automatically imports ringtones into iTunes. Lets you use audio or video files as source material. Universal binary.
Requires trial-and-error to get your ringtone exactly right.