Ringtone Recorder Pro provides iPhones a roundabout route for ringtone capture

There is no shortage of ringtone solutions for getting tones onto the iPhone, especially after Apple opened up the phone enough to allow user generated ringtones without buying them from the iTunes store.

Now there is a bit of a new twist on the ringtone creation game. Ringtone Recorder Pro [App Store] allows you to use your iPhone as a recorder to get any sounds you can capture into your iPhone. It's US$0.99.

The method is, frankly, a bit convoluted. You hold up your iPhone to a speaker, or just talk and create a spoken ringtone. There is a 30 second limit. When you are done recording, you are asked for your email address (first use only), and then the file, in m4r (ringtone) format is mailed to you. It won't do you any good getting that file on your iPhone. You need to grab it on you laptop or desktop Mac. Drag the ringtone attachment to your iTunes library, and sync back to your phone.

Kind of a Rube Goldberg circuitous way of doing it, but those are the limitations of the current iPhone software. I'm not sure it will get any better in iPhone version 3.0 either.

At any rate, the app does what it claims to do, without any bugs or gotchas. Some people reading the description will think this app will allow you to capture music clips from your iPhone music, but that is not the case. If you really want to get a music ringtone on this, you're going to be holding this thing up to a speaker.

Audio quality is good, but it is hardly an ideal way to capture music. It worked very well for capturing my voice. There is a free version [App Store] of this application if you want to try it. It has ads, is slower at saving your recording, and is not quite as easy to use.