As a music composer, it has been years since I've been able to settle for a default ringtone on a phone. Many years back, the ability to import your own short audio clips started appearing in the dominant phones of the day - Siemens, Nokia, Sony, Motorola...
Then a few years back it seemed every magazine and TV show within arm's reach of a gullible teenager offered a way to download the "latest hits" (Crazy Frog, anyone?) to their phone as a ringtone. Amazingly it's still occurring today.
If you're an iPhone owner, you've possibly already wondered at some point how you can get a different ringtone to everyone else, and expand that relatively limited default range of options. The number of apps in the app store to "help" you create ringtones is testament to the difficulty many people experience.
In reality, while not clearly communicated, it is quite easy to create your own ringtone from an existing audio track you have in iTunes (or you could contact me to create a custom ringtone for you!).
The following instructions are based on running iTunes 10.5 on Mac, however the process in older versions and on PC is quite similar:
1. In iTunes, highlight the audio track you want to use as your ringtone. It doesn't matter if it's too long or doesn't start at the point you want it to, you can sort this later...
2. Right click and select "Get Info".
3. Click the Options tab.
4. Check the boxes next to Start Time and Stop Time and enter in the times you want your ringtone to start and stop.
5. Click OK.
6. Right click on the same file again and choose "Create AAC Version".
7. You'll see a new, shorter audio file appear under your original file.
8. Right click on this new shorter file and choose "Show in Finder" (or "Show in Windows Explorer" if on a PC)
9. Change the extension of your audio file from ".m4a" to ".m4r". You may receive a warning message but that's fine, go ahead, make the change.
10. Swap back to iTunes and delete the short ringtone file you just created in Step 6.
11. Import the file you just renamed with the extention ".m4r" into iTunes.
12. Now just connect your iPhone and sync your playlist. You may need to drag the .m4r file into the Ringtones section on your iPhone.
13. On your iPhone, you can now choose this ringtone alongside all the old boring default ones!
Happy ringing! And please, no more of this...
Then a few years back it seemed every magazine and TV show within arm's reach of a gullible teenager offered a way to download the "latest hits" (Crazy Frog, anyone?) to their phone as a ringtone. Amazingly it's still occurring today.
If you're an iPhone owner, you've possibly already wondered at some point how you can get a different ringtone to everyone else, and expand that relatively limited default range of options. The number of apps in the app store to "help" you create ringtones is testament to the difficulty many people experience.
In reality, while not clearly communicated, it is quite easy to create your own ringtone from an existing audio track you have in iTunes (or you could contact me to create a custom ringtone for you!).
The following instructions are based on running iTunes 10.5 on Mac, however the process in older versions and on PC is quite similar:
1. In iTunes, highlight the audio track you want to use as your ringtone. It doesn't matter if it's too long or doesn't start at the point you want it to, you can sort this later...
2. Right click and select "Get Info".
3. Click the Options tab.
4. Check the boxes next to Start Time and Stop Time and enter in the times you want your ringtone to start and stop.
5. Click OK.
6. Right click on the same file again and choose "Create AAC Version".
7. You'll see a new, shorter audio file appear under your original file.
8. Right click on this new shorter file and choose "Show in Finder" (or "Show in Windows Explorer" if on a PC)
9. Change the extension of your audio file from ".m4a" to ".m4r". You may receive a warning message but that's fine, go ahead, make the change.
10. Swap back to iTunes and delete the short ringtone file you just created in Step 6.
11. Import the file you just renamed with the extention ".m4r" into iTunes.
12. Now just connect your iPhone and sync your playlist. You may need to drag the .m4r file into the Ringtones section on your iPhone.
13. On your iPhone, you can now choose this ringtone alongside all the old boring default ones!
Happy ringing! And please, no more of this...
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