14 DAY TRIAL // Funny thing I had written so much about smartphones and audio applications dedicated to them, but until last night, I didn't own one. Well, from this day on, I feel just a bit deeper in the matter as now I can actually test the results of certain software directly on my desk; and having said that, I must tell you how it all started with this article.
I was exchanging some tones via bluetooth with a work colleague and I suddenly realized I have no custom ringtone on my giant phone memory. I guess you all know what came next: looking for a nice software to help me create some ringtones and also help me do my job when reviewing it. As I was quite frantic in my endeavor, I stopped looking for freeware software so that I could obtain long ringtones so my searches did not take long at all - just some clicks away I have found the MP3 to Ringtone Gold, I looked briefly at it and installed it. Then...
The Looks. The Works. The Ease of Use.
I guess that "simple and clean"could describe very well the GUI of the MP3 to Ringtone Gold: a main window, all in sharp and bright colors ( in my opinion - not the best chromatic association between Chartreuse and Cyan) and with very visible elements, even though the direct-conversion icons could have been a little bigger.
The software may seem a bit eye-candy but in fact it is just looking a bit better and flashier than most similar programs without looking "creamy" at all. Basically, its GUI is split in 2 regions and in the upper one all buttons have been placed while the lower part of the screen has been designed to house the waveform sines of the audio media you want to process.
MP3 to Ringtone Gold is so simple that I really have to make an effort to see what's to be written here so you won't get bored and I am not ridicule... I guess that even those who have never used such a software before will not spend more than some minutes to find out the way MP3 to Ringtone Gold is working: from simple and fast file drag and drop to selecting a portion of the loaded file, everything can flow even as if by mistake :). Really, no advanced PC or ringtone/telecom notions are needed in order to have MP3 to Ringtone Gold creating the ringtones you need!
Selecting a region of the waveform is a very visual operation and I am sure that anyone will be able to create exactly the ringtone they wanted: the background of the sine-view is light blue and the waveform is cyan; selecting with your mouse cursor renders the new portion whose color is bright orange thus being extremely visible due to the (a bit too) high contrast. What can be rather hard to accomplish is "cutting" (selecting) the exact region from an audio track without any zoom tools and no manual numeric adjustment: you just have to be a bit lucky or have a very steady and sure hand to make the perfect cuts, especially in a large file.
The solution in this case is to gradually split the large audio file in gradually smaller parts so it will become more visually accessible and you reach the precision required by certain types of ringtones. Back to the ringtones, the MP3 to Ringtone Gold can produce MP3, MMF, MID, AMR and WAV files as a result of audio processing so you have a wide range of formats to choose from, even adapt to your phone's specific requirements.
And if this just isn't enough, the MP3 to Ringtone Gold works as a ripper and audio file converter as well: you can easily rip the contents of an audio CD to a location of your choice on your HDD, in MP3 format. Besides this operation, you can change MP3 to WAV and vice-versa, as well as re-encode the MP3 files at lower quality so they will not occupy much space on mobiles with no extension memory cards. Nice thing that the producers of the MP3 to Ringtone Gold gave a thought to people who do not have very much room in their handhelds but still want MP3 ringtones!
Setting up the generic work-parameters of the MP3 to Ringtone Gold is a much easier thing than you (and even I) have been expecting: the Options menu pops up a new window in which are the few tweakable things for both MP3 and WAV formats. I guess it's futile to explain you how to use checkboxes and sliders, drop menus and the OK button :). Nevertheless, I'll add that you can easily opt for mono, joint or stereo output at a multitude of MPEG qualities form which I'll name only the "insane", "studio" and "voice" ones.
As well, you can produce ringtones with samplerates between 8 and 48 kHz and bitrates ranging from 8kbit/s up to 320kbit/s; you can re-scale the volume enveloped for both channels independently or linked and manually set the quality of VBR files. The WAV files have all traditional controls (8-16 bits, 8-48kHz) while the AMR has also numerous settings for quality.
The almost 30 dollars the producers of MP3 to Ringtone Gold ask for registering this program may seem a bit of a high price but think about how much would a ringtone made by other people costs in your favorite online store, divide the MP3 to Ringtone Gold's price and see how many ringtones you can get; and then think that with MP3 to Ringtone Gold, you pay just once and then you can produce millions of such files, even get to become a ringtone seller, who could tell..
The Good
It was the overall ease of use what I liked best about the MP3 to Ringtone Gold: technically, almost any PC newbie would learn how to create very good-sounding ringtones in just a few easy steps. And this means a lot!
The Bad
Maybe a "calmer" GUI would be more welcome - I have spent some hours in front on the MP3 to Ringtone Gold already and it's tiring.
The Truth
The truth is that MP3 to Ringtone Gold is well worth at least trying, especially that if you're fine with 5 seconds-long ringtones, the producers have been kind enough to let you create an unlimited number of such ringtones without any other restriction, without the need to register. Go and play!
Don't leave this page before taking a look at the screenshots I have prepared for you:
