Someone's just discovered a new way to get AAC files recognized as ringtones. Might save you a lot of trouble!

There are pretty easy ways (like iToner) to get full-length protected AAC files on your iPhone as ringtones. The problem with that idea is the ringtone starts playing from the start of the song, not the best 30 seconds. As such, full-length songs don't make very good ringtones, and this new bit with the atom data doesn't really help much.

After saying that, I wondered if iTunes would allow you to change the "start/stop" settings of a song file, but after converting a .m4p file via the AtomicParsley method and adding it to the iTunes Ringtones list, I can say that it does not. Perhaps it would allow it if you pre-set the AAC file's start/stop before running AtomicParsley on it.

Why not just use the burn to CD and convert back to MP3 (or whatever) trick to get an unprotected file? Or am I missing something?

Well you'll lose quality that way. I'd like to retain as much quality as possible.