DrewsBox

Note: The screenshots for this tutorial were lost during site mainainance. Some day I hope to remake them.

For my first tutorial I will be showing you how to easily make your own ringtones out of your favorite mp3 songs. This tutorial is for anybody with a modern cell phone featuring BlueTooth wireless or USB technology. For those of you without this feature, I will suggest some affordable alternatives.

Install Audacity

For starters you need to download a free program called Audacity. This is a great open source program that has many basic audio editing featrures. After installing the program, you will need to download and install the LAME MP3 Encoder which will allow you to export your ringtones as mp3 files. If you installed Audacity to the default location, I recommend saving the LAME MP3 Encoder to the same directory (C:\Program Files\Audacity). Before you can export your ringtone, you will be prompted to locate this directory.

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Import And Edit Your Song File

Next, import your song file ( File > Open ). In this screenshot, I pointed out a few important tools. The first tool is the selection tool; click and drag with this tool to select portions of the song. To delete a selection, just hit the delete key on your keyboard. The second tool is the zoom tool which will expand the timeline so you can do more precise editing. There is an annoying thing about editing with Audacity, do delete and edit the timeline of your song, you need to make sure that the song is stopped and not paused.

Export

When you’ve got the file chisseled down to your favorite 20 or 30 seconds, you’re ready to export the file ( File > Export as MP3 ). To make sure the ringtone is exactly how you want it, open it with your favorite media player (Zune, WMP, or iTunes).

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Upload The Ringtone

In order to get your ringtone on your phone, you’ll have to use some kind of syncronizing software. If your phone uses Windows Mobile, Microsoft ActiveSync will suit you perfectly. ActiveSync allows USB and BlueTooth connections for easy file sharing. If you have a different or integrated phone operating system, you will have to find a different syncing software. Your phone might even allow for plug-and-play file sharing, just plug it in and it appears as removable storage in “My Computer.”

Alternative Solutions

As I mentioned before, there are alternatives for those of you without BlueTooth or USB phones. My previous method for customizing ringtones was through Mobile17. This is a website that offers a free service allowing you to upload a song and send a clip of it to your phone or email. The downside is that non-paying customers have their ringtones put in a queue that can sometimes be a 2 hour wait, or more! Another bummer; if you have it sent directly to your phone, you will have to pay for the download (depending on your cellular plan). If you have it sent to your email, you can upload it to your phone via BlueTooth or USB (but you wouldn’t be reading this if you had those!).

This concludes the custom ringtones tutorial, I hope this helps! Feedback is welcome and appreciated.

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