How to: Creating your own ringtones

Many people online are asking where they can download free ringtones for their mobile phones. Mobile providers are usually charging ringtones and they are getting more and more expensive every day. Did you know that you can make your own ringtones on your mac very easily using the software that is free? In this article I’m going to show you how to do it in a few easy steps.

Software you will need: iTunes (It already comes as a part of iLife app. just check if you have newest version installed- 7.0.1) Audacity (Free open-source audio editor and recorder) iTunes -LAME encoder (The iTunes-LAME Encoder combines the simple interface of iTunes with the high quality of the LAME encoder)

Step 1: Preparing a song: Now when you have all the software that you will need, you are ready to start preparing your music. You can either rip your song (s) from an audio CD using iTunes or you can use an mp3 song that you already have on your computer. If you are ripping songs from your CD’s, I’d recommend you to do it with iTunes Lame encoder rather then using just iTunes app. Your ringtone does not have to be in a full MP3 quality so you can lower the bit-rate to 48Kbps when encoding. If you already have an mp3 song in your iTunes music library, make a copy of the song and re-encode it.

Step 2: Additional Tweaking: When you have prepared your song to be used as a ringtone, you can now use Audacity software to “fine tune” it. In Audacity you can trim the parts of a song that you want to use ( if you don’t want to use a whole song), or you can add echo and other cool effects to your ringtone.

Step 3: Sending ringtones to your phone: Now when you have made your ringtone and if you are happy with how does it sound, you will need to upload it to your mobile phone. Depends on your mobile phone model, you can do it either using Bluetooth or DCC (Direct Cable Connection). For more information’s about your phone features, visit the website of your mobile phone maker.

What if my phone does not support MP3 format?: In that case, you’d need some ringtone converters which enable you to converting your rintones into various formats ( polyphonic – midi ) that are supported by your phone. “Coding Workshop Ringtone Converter” is a good one. ($US 18,95).

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