Review: Avanquest Ringtone Media Studio 2 music software

People who like to personalise their possessions – putting wallpaper on a PC and alloys on a car – are often the ones who like to select a ringtone of their own for their mobile phones.

There are plenty of places to download such ringtones, of course, but you might like to go a little bit further and sample and edit custom sounds. Ringtone Media Studio 2 will do just that and transfer them to a phone, all for no further charge.

Load a sound file into the program and its waveform will appear, as in any music editor. The sound can be cropped to a section to be made into a ringtone. More than that, though, a music track can be built up from components, as if composing a new track, though in a simplified form.

There are a few sound clips to pick from on the CD, and a larger library is available online, though the polyphonic samples sound, without exception, like something played on a £20 keyboard. You can also load and work with files in all the major formats, including Midi, WMA, Wav, mp3, AAC, SMAF, AMR and audio CD.

Once a ring tone is done, there's the problem of transferring it to a mobile. Ringtone Media Studio 2 has this well covered, as it can transfer the finished sound file through a cable connection from the PC to a phone, via a Bluetooth link or, cleverly, via a Wap connection from the phone.

Users get access to an online area where 5MB of ringtone files may be stored for Wap downloading. The software supports over 800 different handsets, including phones from all the major manufacturers.

As well as sampling and transferring ringtones to the phone, the software can create photos and videos for a phone in the same way, though there's less editing potential in this aspect. This is a competent little application, fulfilling a small but significant niche.

Vista compatible: Yes