Phone ringtones

I jump when I hear high pitched sounds, and a pager with it's damned high pitched beeps has been a very sore point with me for as long as I have carried the things.

Recently though, I moved my messaging service over to my phone, and that has improved things quite a bit, since there are more sound alerts to choose from, and a volume control is available.

Today, I hit nirvana: Low pitch, ascending intensity, and a sound of my choosing. An mp3 ringtone for my phone !

Equiptment:
mp3 phone. I use the BT motorola v330
file transfer mechanism: I use BT, but SMS is pretty easy, too
iMovie to edit the sound clip's duration and fade-in
iTunes to export in the correct format
== For non mac users -- your fav sound editor and format exporter. Many people use audacity

Steps:
Kasima was feeling quiet, so I googled 'cat purr mp3' and found one I liked in QT format
Duration was OK, so I just set the fade-in in iMovie, and exported an aif as 22 Khz, 64 kbit mono.
That file was dragged into iTunes, and converted to mp3 with same compression scheme
The new MP3 was dragged to the desktop for easy retrieval, and then BT was used to send the file to my phone. Very conveniently, my phone asked me if I wanted to store the file as a ringtone, and after clicking 'yes', my phone now purrs when a text message comes in, starting off softly but getting quite loud if ignored.

Grrrreat

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(rick57 @ Apr 27 2006, 07:48 PM) [snapback]246358[/snapback]</div>

For you, a ringtone is nothing more than a short 20 - 30 second mp3 file encoded in mono at 64 kbps and 22 kHz sampling. That's it! I say for you, because in older phones that did not support mp3, midi files were used -- but you can safely ignore that bit of pre-history.

Audacity is popular because it will edit the sound clip, and export it in the requisitie mp3 within a single program. Google 'audacity ringtones' for a step by step tutorial how to roll your own. It is *really* simple.

As for getting the file to the phone: If your pc has bluetooth, use it for wireless file transfer. Other people have pc -> phone cables, and a transfer program they acquired. Verizon tried to cripple BT file transfer in order to 'convince' people to buy ringtones through them, but I don't know further details.
SMS: Most (all ?) wireless phone providers provide you with an email address to your phone. I use T-mobile, and my phones email addy is [email protected] -- where 505 is my area code, and 610xxxx is my phone number. Other providers will have similar schemas. Email your phone, with the mp3 as an attachment. You do have to tell the phone to use the mp3 as the ringtone. That will be phone s/w specific. Moto is easy -- just go into your alerts and pick the mp3.

Depending on your phone plan, there may be charges for using SMS. T-mobile doesn't charge for receipt of text,file, or video -- which is one of reasons I am happy with the company. But I digress ..

Hard to believe that people are paying $billions, instead of rolling their own customized ringtones for free.