No matter how tired we get of listening to the custom ringtones of others, sometimes we absolutely have to have a custom ringtone of our own. Here’s how to make a ringtone and put it on your iPhone for free.
Maybe there is a song that you think defines you, or some music that you just love. Or you know of a song that would make a perfect ringtone for a friend. But all those commercial ringtone places are a drag, besides being worried about downloading malware with your ringtone. The solution that you are looking for is a way to make ringtones out of music that you already own.
On the iPhone under iOS4 that is a fairly simple process. First, you need to pick a song. Then you need to cut a short clip out of it. Then you need to move it to the phone and finally select it as a ring tone. Selecting the song is the most fun part of the project, and the only part that will cost you money if you don’t already own the music. Regardless if the ringtone is for your iPhone default or a special one for one of your contacts, all the first step needs is some inspiration.
Cutting the song down to a shorter size requires some work and a piece of software known as an audio editor. There is one very good audio editor that is available for most popular operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The name of that software is Audacity and it is available here. Audacity is fairly intuitive and has good instructions, so you’ll be able to figure it out fairly easily.
Basically, what you want to do is load your song into the editor, select a 10-30 second selection, and then save it in a specific format for use as an iPhone ringtone. If you’re especially clever, you will be able to find a usable “loop” that does not sound unnatural if it repeats as your phone rings. When you have used Audacity to make a short audio clip for use as your ringtone, you will need to make sure to save it an mp4 or m4a file. After you have saved it, find it and edit the file extension to “m4r” which is what the iPhone uses for ringtones. Use a name you’ll easily remember for the first part of the file name.
Then you need to add your ringtone to iTunes. To do this, just open iTunes and drag your m4r file into the “Ringtones” folder in the itunes library. Then sync your phone to your computer and iTunes will automatically move the new ringtone to your telephone. In order to select that item as either the default iPhone ringtone, or as a special ringtone for a contact, see our column titled “How do I change the ringtone on my iPhone.” When you get to the list of ringtones on your iPhone, you will see the special ringtone you just made in the list. Just select it as you would any other ringtone.
Maybe there is a song that you think defines you, or some music that you just love. Or you know of a song that would make a perfect ringtone for a friend. But all those commercial ringtone places are a drag, besides being worried about downloading malware with your ringtone. The solution that you are looking for is a way to make ringtones out of music that you already own.
On the iPhone under iOS4 that is a fairly simple process. First, you need to pick a song. Then you need to cut a short clip out of it. Then you need to move it to the phone and finally select it as a ring tone. Selecting the song is the most fun part of the project, and the only part that will cost you money if you don’t already own the music. Regardless if the ringtone is for your iPhone default or a special one for one of your contacts, all the first step needs is some inspiration.
Cutting the song down to a shorter size requires some work and a piece of software known as an audio editor. There is one very good audio editor that is available for most popular operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The name of that software is Audacity and it is available here. Audacity is fairly intuitive and has good instructions, so you’ll be able to figure it out fairly easily.
Basically, what you want to do is load your song into the editor, select a 10-30 second selection, and then save it in a specific format for use as an iPhone ringtone. If you’re especially clever, you will be able to find a usable “loop” that does not sound unnatural if it repeats as your phone rings. When you have used Audacity to make a short audio clip for use as your ringtone, you will need to make sure to save it an mp4 or m4a file. After you have saved it, find it and edit the file extension to “m4r” which is what the iPhone uses for ringtones. Use a name you’ll easily remember for the first part of the file name.
Then you need to add your ringtone to iTunes. To do this, just open iTunes and drag your m4r file into the “Ringtones” folder in the itunes library. Then sync your phone to your computer and iTunes will automatically move the new ringtone to your telephone. In order to select that item as either the default iPhone ringtone, or as a special ringtone for a contact, see our column titled “How do I change the ringtone on my iPhone.” When you get to the list of ringtones on your iPhone, you will see the special ringtone you just made in the list. Just select it as you would any other ringtone.
0 comments:
Post a Comment