# Guide to making your own ringtones for mobile devices



## massahwahl (Aug 13, 2008)

Since we dont have a mobile section for the forum yet (dont understand why really) I will post this here and it can be freely moved if someone feels its in the wrong spot. Ive seen a few posts recently asking how to create custom ringtones for mobile phones and since ive been doing this since my very first cell phone, I thought I could share my know-how with everyone and maybe answer questions you may have.

Keep in mind all cell phones/carriers are going to have slightly different terminology for their hardware and I dont guarantee that this guide will help in all situations, but please feel free to message me or post any questions you may have and I will do my best to help you out! I will say that I have been a customer of ATT and Sprint and have used several phones on those carriers with great success. I have done this on Verizon most recently which presented a little bit of a challenge because they require a certain file name for the tone to show up.

Okay! Lets Begin!

*STEP 1:* 
If youve made it this far I assume you have a mobile phone that you want to trick it out with your own ringtones. No one blames you because most carriers charge you $3-$4 for a 15 second tone and if you dont have a data plan you end up paying for the time you spent browsing for that special cover of 'The chicken dance' you wanted and by the time its all said and done, you just blew $7 on a shotty sounding ringtone! 

To begin we need the right tools! First and foremost you need a way to get your custom tones from your computer to your phone. This can be done in a number of different ways, most notably:

Via USB data cable provided by your carrier (or third party)
Via Bluetooth if your phone accepts incoming .mp3 files and your computer has this feature
or Via your phones memory card slot (this means you need a memory card though!)

If you have the ability to use one of these three options your set! Most phones nowadays come with USB data cables and if yours didnt, check online because you can usually snatch one for under $8 off ebay or amazon. Just make sure it fits your model and that you can find drivers for your phone online somewhere!

Next we need a program that will allow us to edit our songs into 15-30 second 'Ringtones' and save them as .mp3 files. Hands down your best option here is audacity which is free from http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=6235&filename=audacity-win-1.2.6.exe Download it and install it, it will become your best friend in the steps to come.

Lastly, your going to need to install the drivers for your phone. This has been tricky with older phones, nut almost all new phones are going to have the drivers openly available or may even have come packaged with your phone when you got it. Always check your carriers website as that is the most likely spot to find the drivers you need.


*STEP 2:*
Now that we have the tools we need, lets make some ringtones!

Open up Audacity and lets have a look around:






Unless you have used an audio editing program before, a lot of these buttons and gadgets are going to look foreign to you. Unless you know what your doing, I would advise you not to play around to much with any settings because if changing something you didnt intend to can have adverse affects on your finished tones.

Right now lets go to File>Open






As you can see I have navigated to my music folder and chosen the song I want to make into a ringtone. In this example I chose 'Scarecrow' by Beck because Beck kicks ass and deserves to alert me of my new text message.

Open up the song you choose and lets look at the editing window:






BEFORE WE GO ANY FARTHER!> this last step may have given you an error message telling you the song you are trying to open could not be used by audacity. If this happens, it means the song you want to edit likely has copywrite restrictions and audacity cant read it. Ive had this happened when opening music I purchase online that comes with RIAA protection usually from itunes or zune, etc... stores. To get around this, burn the song to a cd using your music programs software then re-rip the song as an mp3. This *should* fix the problem. If not, choose another song and lets move on.

Inside of the editing window you see a big block of squiggly lines. This is called your *waveform* and is basically a visually representation of the song you want to chop into a ringtone.

use the 'stop' 'play' buttons at the top of audacity (or the spacebar) to listen to your song. Clicking your mouse at different points on the waveform will let you start and stop at different points during the song.

As you listen to your song, determine what part you want to use as a ringtone. Most people are going to want the refrain or that killer Slash solo on 'Sweet Child of Mine' but the preference is totally up to you. A general rule of thumb is that your tone should be no longer than 30 seconds and no less than 8. If your tone is to long, it takes up more room on your phones memory and when someone calls you they may hear your phone ring two or three times before your ringtone starts because the phone is trying to load the freaking thing! So keep it short and sweet.

(*)Another rule I should add, when choosing your ringtone use a little common sense. It may seem like a really awesome idea to have a song that blurts profanity every three seconds as your moms ringtone, but when your out in public this can be a little embarrassing when your phone goes off and other people are around you. Maybe it doesnt matter to you, but just something to think about.

Now that you know what part of the song you want for your ringtone, use your mouse to 'highlight' the section that you want:






Dont worry about being super accurate at this point, we'll finetune it in a second. Just make sure you have selected a few seconds to the front and end of the part you want to make sure we can make it cound good. When your selection is highlighted, go up to edit>copy.

Now open up a new window using File>New. Then Use Edit>Paste to paste your selection to your new window.

Check your times first off and see what you have to work with. In the example, my cut is around 18.5 seconds long. Plenty long enough to make a god ringtone:






Now using the same highlighting technique we used earlier, try and highlight any areas of the tone we dont want to play. Trim up the beginning and ending as best you can to make the ringtone flow and not start in the middle of any words or cut off to abruptly. I usually try and find a strong drum beat to kick off any song phrases I am using, but its entirely up to you how you want it to sound and what type of music you are using. When you highlight an area you dont want, press the 'delete' button on your keyboard to wave it good bye.

*STEP 3*

Congratulations! You have just made your first ringtone and it didnt cost you a cent! Now comes the challenging part! (I know I made you think it was easy up to this point)

When I made tones on my first phone ( a samsung something or other about 5 years ago) I could save the file name as any willy nilly thing I wanted and it would show up in my founds ringtone directory with little effort. Since those days carriers have caught on to consumers desire to make their own ringtones and since they cant really charge you for music you already own, they have attempted to make it a little difficult. In my experience ATT is the easiest most 'editor friendly' carrier when it comes to this. Verizon has been the most difficult.

Since this is your first tone, were going to save it three different ways to see which one or all of them show up in our ringtone directory. 

First go to File> Save as and navigate to where you want to save all of your new ringtones. I made myself a folder on my desktop to save them all so they are easy to find.

What shall you save your tone as? Well save it three times as follows:

Beck_Scarecrow.mp3
Beck Scarecrow.mp3
ringtonesscarecrow.mp3

I used my song as an example, just replace the name of the example with your song in each of those. IE:

(your artist)_(your song).mp3
(your artist) (your song).mp3
ringtones(your song).mp3

the third one is really only relevant to verizon customers who have v-cast media manager. So if your on any other carrier ignore the third save option.

*STEP 4*

Now to get the tones to your phone. This is where things get really hairy because each phone and carrier is going to be a little different. If my info doesnt help, message me and I will try my best to track down an answer for you.

Depending on how your connecting, do the following:

USB data cable:
If your phone has a 'mass storage mode' and can be opened by going to your 'my computer' icon do that now.

Bluetooth:
'Sync' your phone to your computer VIA bluetooth. You will have to check with your phones manual for info on how to do this. After it is connected, you should be able to open your phone from your 'my computer' icon.

Media Card:
Assuming you have a usb adapter for your media card plug it in now and open the folder for the card from your 'my computer' icon.

If your phone comes with some sort of 'media manager' software hang tight because I will get to your situations later.

-0-

Once you have opened your phones containing folders have a look to see what kind of folders are already present on it. Many phones will have a 'ringtones' folder or 'media' folder. If you use V-cast on verizon, your phone will have a v-cast folder with a 'ringtones' folder inside of it. In all cases, there should be a folder that stand out as the likely candidate for where you need to copy your files to.

(*) WARNING!! Under no circumstance should you change or edit any of the files or folders contained on your phone! Deleting or moving something you shouldnt could potentially fubar your phone and cause me to laugh at you because im warning you ahead of time!

Now that you picked the folder to try, go grab those ringtone files we made earlier and plop them into your phones appropriate folder. After they have copied, unplug that bad boy and lets have a looksee what we have:

*STEP 5*

'The Unveiling'

*Hopefully now that the tones are on your phone you will be able to see them when you go into your phones ringtones directory. On smartphones this is usually under 'Media' and on other phones you may have a 'music' program or 'my stuff' program that lets you access all the godies on your phone or memory card. If all went well, you should see at least one of the files we made earlier and hopefully all of them. If you see all of them, name the files whatever you want but keep the filenames short because some phones wont read long filenames. If you only see one of the filenames we made, plug your phone back in and delete the one that didnt work and follow the working format for all of your other new tones.



Hopefully that didnt trail off to far at the end, im getting a little sleepy so leave me some comments if you have any questions and I will try to help you out!


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## cohen (Aug 13, 2008)

Nice thread, thanks a lot, i'm sure a lot of people would love it.

By the way, i sent you a PM, regarding this


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## massahwahl (Aug 13, 2008)

I will be updating this as people begin to ask questions and point out anything I missed. The first big update will come tonight or tomorrow and include info on using a few of the different 'media manager' programs some phones will make you use.


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## Vizy (Aug 13, 2008)

nice one ninja


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## massahwahl (Aug 13, 2008)

Thanks Vizy!


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## massahwahl (Oct 25, 2008)

I havnt bumped this one in a while, so in case anyone still cares...


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## makenlan (Jan 7, 2009)

I know its been a while but I was following your instructions and couldn't find out how to actually get the files on to my phone, or even open it up from my computer.
I have a Verizon Voyager phone and it came with a usb cord.
Please and thanks.


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## massahwahl (Jan 7, 2009)

Did you install the verizon software? Or do a search for your phones drivers?


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## luvlivesmile (Feb 7, 2009)

*Aup?*

Audacity is saving everything as an .aup file. How do I get it to save as an .mp3??


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## MouSe (Feb 7, 2009)

Great guide! This is how I used to do it on my Moto SLVR. But, now that I have a iPhone I can't do it this way anymore. So now I just go to http://www.myxer.com and it creates free ringtones for me.

Not trying to steal your thunder, I'm just throwing that out there for iPhone users.


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## aznmunkey98786 (Aug 23, 2009)

i just tried this out and i know its been a while, but no matter where i save the files or what i name them, they never come up on my phone! i use a verizon voyager and i use a microSD. can you please help?

 thanks!!


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## G25r8cer (Aug 28, 2009)

^^ I believe the ringtones must be loaded on the phones memory and not the sd card


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## ganzey (Aug 29, 2009)

ukulele_ninja said:


> Since we dont have a mobile section for the forum yet (dont understand why really)



There is a laptop/smartphone section


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## Hyper_Kagome (Nov 5, 2009)

luvlivesmile said:


> Audacity is saving everything as an .aup file. How do I get it to save as an .mp3??



Also having this issue. I don't have a File>Save as you state in your guide and when I try to export is as an Mp3 it won't allow me saying I don't have some file and prompts me the option to open it, but I have no idea where it is.


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## Fatback (Nov 5, 2009)

Hyper_Kagome said:


> Also having this issue. I don't have a File>Save as you state in your guide and when I try to export is as an Mp3 it won't allow me saying I don't have some file and prompts me the option to open it, but I have no idea where it is.



Can I suggest an easy alternative for you. Go to http://www.myxer.com/ look on the right side of the page middle ways down. You should see a box that says make your own. Select the song from your computer then click upload. Follow the steps and edit your song. Then just send it to your phone. Or you can just find the song you want, I'm sure someone has already uploaded it. Then send it to your phone download and enjoy. 

Almost everything on that site is free, but there is stuff that cost so be careful on what you click.


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## Hyper_Kagome (Nov 5, 2009)

Fatback said:


> Can I suggest an easy alternative for you. Go to http://www.myxer.com/ look on the right side of the page middle ways down. You should see a box that says make your own. Select the song from your computer then click upload. Follow the steps and edit your song. Then just send it to your phone. Or you can just find the song you want, I'm sure someone has already uploaded it. Then send it to your phone download and enjoy.
> 
> Almost everything on that site is free, but there is stuff that cost so be careful on what you click.



I don't have a Data plan. I don't know how much it'll cost me to actually use the browser on my phone.

I am aware of that site, but I thought this would be a good try since I don't have the data or any knowledge of browser cost.


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## Fatback (Nov 5, 2009)

Hyper_Kagome said:


> I don't have a Data plan. I don't know how much it'll cost me to actually use the browser on my phone.
> 
> I am aware of that site, but I thought this would be a good try since I don't have the data or any knowledge of browser cost.



Sorry about that

I will see if I can find another way.


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## Hyper_Kagome (Nov 16, 2009)

Still waiting on a solution of some sort.


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## massahwahl (Nov 17, 2009)

Wow I dropped the ball on this one  hyper, what version of audacity are you using? It is possible that maybe they don't allow exporting as mp3 anymore, I have not used the newest version so I don't know. Ill do some digging though and try to figure out an alternative.


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## Hyper_Kagome (Nov 17, 2009)

Pretty sure I used the link in your first post for mine.


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