Making Your Own Ringtones - for Free!

I recently bought a new cell phone. I wasn't looking for the sleekest model, or the one with the most features. There was one feature, however, that I was particularly interested in: Bluetooth. That's right, the ubiquitous technology in phones, PDAs, laptops and a multitude of other wireless devices. The reason I wanted a phone with Bluetooth capabilities is that I did not want to spend exorbitant amounts of money buying ringtones.

Suppose you have an mp3 of a favorite song on your computer or on a compact disk in your house, why would you buy that same song again to place on your phone. In order to "make" your own ringtones and place them on your phone, you will need the following things:

1. A Bluetooth enabled phone.
2. A Bluetooth card or Bluetooth enabled computer.
3. An Internet connection.

You need an Internet connection so that you can download the free audio editor, Audacity. It is available from http:// audacity.sourceforge.net/

With Audacity and the associated LAME mp3 encoder, you can take your existing mp3 or other audio files and convert them to an mp3 or wav format to place onto your phone.

After downloading and installing Audacity and the LAME encoder, procede to open your favorite audio song in the editor. The reason you should use Audacity is that your phone has only limited memory, typically if it is a new phone it's somewhere around around 12-14 megabytes. That means if you put 3 full-length songs on your phone, you're pretty much out of free space. This is extremely inefficient. A typical ringtone will ring for 30 seconds or less, that means that your song clips can be shortened and thus you can fit more ringtones on your phone.

To shorten a song, play it through once using Audacity. Find spots where you think it would be a good idea to start or stop cuts - and try to keep clip lengths to just over or under 30 seconds. When you're satisfied with the interval chosen, select the audio on either side of the clip and use the cut function (the scissors) to cut out the extra audio.

Next go to File and move your cursor down the list until you get to Export as MP3... Assuming you have downloaded the LAME encoder (and configured it according to the directions from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3), Audacity will ask you where you want to save the file and to specify a filename.

Now the final step, and the most time consuming and difficult, is to get that song clip onto your phone. Depending upon your computer's operating system and your phone model, this can be either a very frustrating or very simple task. Usually your phone's User's Manual will have details on connecting your phone to your computer using Bluetooth, or some sort of universal series bus (USB) interface. Windows has a Bluetooth feature that will help auto-configure connected devices.

Once you have transferred your song onto your phone, simply select it from your ringtone menu and enjoy!