Few years ago mobile technology was looked at like some kind of magic. Nowadays a cell phone can effortlessly rival that time's PCs. The cell phone has transformed seriously: from luxury at that time to an everyday-tool. Even more, today's cell phone has developed its own new world of options: as a fashion-related object, as a high-class stylish label, as a mark of elegance and trend.

From custom gilded shells, bearing precious stones to expensive mp3 ringtones extracted from the day's highest-ranked hits, the cell phone receives more and more attention with each day that passes. Since the way your phone rings has become a potential social labeling-standard, new roads had to be explored. This is how programs like the Kylix Ringtone Manager were born and the world spun around again and again.

The looks

Well, Kylix Ringtone Manager surely looks classy. Very simple yet very stylish appearance, matching perfectly with the potential high-end phone destined to get the ringtones in production. Even though there was also little need to have skins for this software, the ones with which this one comes are very good as well, with either warm or classy colors.

The buttons were attentively designed and only the essential ones are present. A very good choice, since the over-crowded Uis, especially for such a simple and highly-specialized program would be a real pain in the a**.

Very handy bubble-type labels and hints also appear when hovering your mouse over different portions of the screen or at the push of various buttons, explaining what these are or what's happening. For the inexperienced user this isn't a small thing at all.

The options-pane is also very well built from the graphic point of view and the transport controls are both easily readable and well-positioned and this ensures fast and precise operation.

The works

What Kylix Ringtone Manager basically does is to split either existing MP3 tracks or to record from line-in or mic and then split. Well, besides this splitting job, Kylix Ringtone Manager also saves the resulting "slices" in preset formats such as WAV, MP3, SMAF-MMF, AMR, M4A or AAC, each with a wide possibility of choices for bit rates, sample rates. You can even benefit of the fade-in and fade-out options so you can build even cooler ringtones.

A great feature is the fact that you can even produce ringtones out of movies. Yep, it's true: load a movie in this nice little program and you can have in just moments a ringtone with your favourite actor speaking or a favorite quote from a motion picture. And this is cool!

Depending on what kind of ringtones does your cell phone support and also their quality/resolution, you can edit your favourite mp3 songs accordingly, so they become perfectly fit for your mobile terminal.

After you found or recorded a portion you think would suit your wishes as a ringtone, the software lets you preview both the beginning of the future ringtone and its end, on time-lengths you set up from the options panel.

Kylix Ringtone Manager prevents accidental loss of data due to your mistakes by a nice confirmation screen which appears into sight each time a future ringtone is being modified. You can also adjust the recording volume right from the program by means of a handy slide bar, next to the master volume.

After you have previewed and reviewed the selection, with just a push of a button, Kylix Ringtone Manager will convert it to the pre-specified format and then, all you have to do is save your work on you HDD so you can later upload it on you phone.

All operations are very simple and this is why I would recommend it to virtually everyone who wants his own sounds on the cellular phone. Conversion is really fast so you won't need to wait an indefinite time to see and hear the final products of your work.

The good

This program will help even the inexperienced user to produce great ringtones in just minutes, due to its inner simplicity and hint-management. It also exports results in the most common formats used by world's leading cell phones manufacturers. It looks great, works fast and it is cheap.

It will convert even movie-formats to ringtones, mening you can have you fav movie-quotes on your phone.

The bad

Strictly as a personal desire, I guess Kylix Ringtone Manager would be a lot better and even easier to use if it had a dedicated selection tool, exactly the way serious sound editors do. A zoom tool to be used on the sine-view track would be a fantastic addition as well.

The truth

A truly nice program for making ringtones, easy to use and coming at a very attractive price. A very useful tool for those who are always hungry for new or custom ringtones. A tool good even for the professionals who develop ringtones for sale. And for them - a real bargain.