Creating wav format Ringtones

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

Guide by Simon Desser

I'm regularly being asked how to make ringtones for our Smartphones, so I thought I'd do a short guide.

In my guide I'm using Cool Edit 2000, but the basics are the same using any Wav file editor. I'm sure there are plenty of free/cheap wav editors out there, and don't forget, even the expensive top programs like Cool Edit and Soundforge usually have a 30 day trial, which is plenty of time to knock out some cool tones if you don't want to buy them :)

I save my tones as:- Windows PCM Wav 11025Hz 16bit Mono

(They won't sound great on your PC, but there's not really any point having higher quality than this to play out of your Smartphone's speaker)

1) Open the song in Cool Edit (right click & Send to Cool Edit) OR, record the section of song you want in Cool Edit from a CD)

2) Trim the portions of the song you want, zooming in close to finely tune the selction. (Left click & drag your mouse over the sections you want)

3) Discard the bits of the song you don't want, by clicking the "Crop Tool" (or Ctrl + T)

4) Once you're happy with the selection, click "EDIT" & "CONVERT SAMPLE TYPE" (or F11) - Choose 11,025 Hz, 16bit MONO

5) Now to "Normalize" the volume, click "TRANSFORM" & "AMPLITUDE" Choose 100% (This makes the song as loud as possible without distortion)

6) OPTIONAL - If you can't find a nice clean point to end the song, you might want to fade it out. Select the last few seconds of the wav, then click ""TRANSFORM", "AMPLITUDE" & "AMPLIFY", Then click the "FADE" button, and move the "FINAL AMPLIFICATION" slider to Zero.

7) Now to save your tone, click "FILE", "SAVE AS" and change the file type to "WINDOWS PCM (wav)"

I've included a little video clip in Divx format, which shows all the above in action :D

Making_a_Ringtone.zip

Another suggestion by Deemon

Get v1.50 of winamp and install it (dont overwrite any newer versions you might have)

Open up winamp

right click to bring up the menu.

Options - Preferences - Output

Change the output device to .WAV file output (silent)

Now apply that. Press OK

Now when ever you play(or drag on to) an MP3 using this version of winamp a WAV copy of the file will be saved to your desktop. (Note you wont hear the mp3 being played)

takes 2 minutes to set up(once its set up its setup for good) and then only 2 seconds to convert.