Creating my own MP3 Ringtone.

Recently, I bought a very audio-friendly mobile phone and for the first time in my life, I have a cellphone that supports MP3 ringtones.

From my quick "research" on the subject (reading the handphone manual and searching the WWW), I realise there are many ways to get an MP3 ringtone on to my handphone but generally speaking, I will end up having to pay some service or buy some specialty software if I wanted it quickly and easily. Unfortunately for these businesses, I was in no hurry... :wink:

I decided to create my own MP3 ringtone. I imagined it would be easy and it was! Here are my notes:

Connecting my mobilephone to the Computer

When shopping for a cellphone, always find out if you are able to connect the phone to your PC without having to buy some other accessory. I went through many phones that claimed to be "PC-ready" only to find out that I needed a certain other cable or some smartcard reader. Anyway, the one I finally ended up buying, performs flawlessly in this area. I just plug-in the (cellphone supplied) USB cable to the PC and the handphone turns up on my PC as a Removable Storage Device.

Processing my favourite music or song

You will need a sound processing, editing and/or encoding software to help you edit, process and encode your favourite song into an audio file format that your handphone supports i.e. .mp3, .aac or .wma. If you don't already have such a software installed on your computer, I can suggest Audacity. This software is free to use and was simple to set up. I first heard about it here.

MP3

To encode your clip into an MP3 file, you need to download the Lame MP3 encoder (lame_enc.dll) which also freely available. To do this, follow the instructions found here.

AAC

If you're on a Windows PC and you have previously installed the iTunes Player, you can export the clip as a .wav file and simply use the iTunes Player to convert the file into the .aac format.

The basic (Audacity) steps are:

1. Use this software to record 10 to 30 seconds of your favourite song. It's wise to record more and then edit out the portions that you don't need.

2. Once you're satisfied with your edits, you can then encode the file into MP3 format by selecting File > Export as MP3.

3. Set the bit rate for your MP3 (ringtone) encoding. Go to Edit > Preferences.... You can set the MP3 Export Setup (select the File Formats tab) by setting the Bit Rate to 64 - 128 kbps. I set mine at 64. Sound quality is not the priority when creating ringtones, (small) size is!

4. Save it to your phone directly if you have it already connected to the PC.

That's it! Your MP3 ringtone is now ready.

Of course now you'd have to refer to your mobile phone manual to figure out how to use and set this MP3 file as your ringtone.

What did I select as my first MP3 ringtone? Freek-A-Leek from Petey Pablo. Already an old song today but one I still enjoy listening to... besides, it (the song) still makes me smile... :)