Help Notification sounds delay/dont play at all

[Zumaki]

I have custom ring tones for some notifications, and they commonly will either not play at all (phone just vibrates) or will play several seconds after the phone vibrates. I used Ringdroid to make sure there wasn't a long silent portion at the start of these tones, so they should play right away. Could this be a problem with using a custom tone, Android being out of date on this phone, or the hardware itself?

The tones are all less than 3 seconds, so it shouldn't be a load lag...

 

[baddubbin]

my phone always vibrates once or twice before the ringtone starts. all my ringtones are custom so I don't know if it is the same with stock ringtones.