It actually turns out that the ringtone maker tries to reduce quality so much it introduces a lot of artifacting to the audio and ruins it. BUT there's good news: I got looking at the filesystem for the phone and you can actually just place MP3s (any length, any bitrate, even full songs) into the /sdcard/media/audio/ringtones (or /notifications for email/alarm/text, ect.) and it'll show up as a ringtone. All the stupid "ringtone maker" does is reduce bitrate to improve file load times. But even with a full 1MB version of Zero Mission's Brinstar as my ring, the delay is minimal if any different from using the snipped/downrated ringtone version.
I'd just download youtube downloader on your PC (
http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/) and use it to snag mp3 audio from the videos I posted. Then you can just paste the mp3s onto your phone's SD card once you get it.
All 3 of the "notifications" I made with the samus theme sound like crap and the audio drops out completely in one of them.