I got a lot of emails from you guys and lovely girls asking me how to create some custom ringtones for the iPhone. Everybody has a favorite song, and to listen to a snippet of that song every time your iPhone rings its nothing but pure pleasure as far as i am concerned ( even if the person who calls you its not 😛 ).
So, in this post, pretty much we will take a look at various methods to create ringtones. iTunes might be the most popular because you already have it installed, but we will take a look at some webapps , and some software as well. I will give you some links from you can download ringtones for your iPhone as well. So lets get started…
iTunes
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL Like i said, this might be the most popular method with some of you, because you already got iTunes installed and, most of you use it to manage the music on your computer anyway. To be honest i dont like iTunes that much, but it’s an options and its really easy to use.
First you need to find ( or add ) you favorite song to iTunes. Make sure you listen one more time to the tune, and decide EXACTLY which part of the tune you want it as a ringtone. I think that most of you would want the chorous in a song as a ringtone, so make sure you note the time that it starts and it ends. Keep in mind that only DRM-free songs can be used with this ringtone creation process. Any song downloaded from iTunes Music Store will have DRM (Digital Rights Management), so don’t use those songs.Any song ripped from a CD or downloaded from DRM-free sources (P2P, Amazon, your friend) will work just fine.
click to enlarge
Now, right click on the song you want, select “Get Info”, hit the “Options” tab, check both the “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes and specify what time interval you’d like to use as your ringtone clip (Make sure your ringtone is 40 seconds or less!!). Now hit OK.
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
Now, make sure the song you want is still highlighted, click on “Advanced” in your menu bar and select “Create AAC Version”.A duplicate copy of your song will appear in iTunes – this new song will have the same filename but shorter “Time” .Go back to the original song and uncheck those “Start Time” and “End Time” boxes.Drag the duplicate song to your Desktop and once its on your desktop, delete the duplicate file in iTune.
click to enlarge
On your Desktop, rename the file with the “.m4r” file extension .This turns your song file into an iPhone ringtone fil.Your “songname.m4a” file should now be named “songname.m4r”.Now you can drag it back to iTunes in the Ringtones section, and sync it with your iPhone. Congrats, you got a wicked home made iPhone ringtone now.
iPhone Ringtone Converter ( web app )
This web application is pretty straight forward and you will not have any problem with it.You just need to upload a .mp3 file, cut the file using their cutting tool (remember : max 40 seconds ) , convert your .Mp3 to .M4r and download it. Thats it, now sync the downloaded .m4r file.
GarageBand ( MAC )
1) Launch both iTunes and GarageBand ’08.
2) In iTunes, select the tune that you want to grab a short ringtone from. GarageBand can perform its magic with regular MP3 files or with AAC-encoded (iTunes standard) files.
3) In GarageBand, create a New Music Project. You can do this either by closing an open project and then clicking the Create New Music Project button on the GarageBand splash screen, or by selecting New from the File menu. Select a name (in the example shown below, it’s the name of the song — Thomas Dolby’s “Blinded Me With Science”) and location to save the GarageBand project, then click Create.
4) GarageBand displays a timeline with a single track. Delete the track (click on it, then choose Delete Track from the Track menu).
5) Drag your selected tune from iTunes to GarageBand. The song is imported into GarageBand and a new music track appears:
6) Now comes the fun part — listen to the song and pick out a short (30-40 second) snippet for be your ringtone. I seem to always pick the most recognizable part of the tune, which is usually a refrain or some hook that is memorable. As you play through the song and find the start of the ringtone, pause the playback, and move the playhead (the vertical red line) to about the beginning of the ringtone. Don’t worry about getting it exactly since you can do some additional editing later.
7) You’ll need to delete the music ahead of the start of your ringtone. To do this, click on the track to select it, then choose Split from the Edit menu to split the track at the playhead. Click the blank GarageBand work area to deselect the track, then click on the portion you want to delete and press the Delete key on your keyboard.
8) Figure out where the end of your ringtone is going to be and make sure that the playhead is situated somewhere close to it. Use the same technique described in step 7 to delete the music after the end of your ringtone. At t his point, you should have a short piece of the overall song to turn into a ringtone.
9) Drag the beginning of the ringtone all the way to the left side of the track timeline. This is probably a good time to save your GarageBand project as well.
10) Now, let’s soften the beginning and end of the ringtone to cover up any mistakes we’ve made in editing. To do this, click on the track automation button. See that set of five buttons at the beginning of the track? Click the little downward pointing triangle to bring up track automation. We’re going to set a fade-in and fade-out on our ringtone.
11) About a half-second or so into the beginning of the track, click the volume line to create an edit point (left, below). Next, click and drag the beginning of the volume line down to zero volume (right, below — -144.0 db).
What you’ve just done is create a fade-in for the beginning of the ringtone. It starts off silently and builds to full volume in about a second. If you find that you need the fade-in to be longer or shorter, just move that second volume dot left or right.
12) Do the same for the end of the ringtone. Click the volume line to create an edit point about one second from the end of the ringtone. Then click and drag the end of the volume line down to zero volume (-144.0 dB).
13) Listen to the entire ringtone to make sure that the fade-in and fade-out sound good. If they do, save the project one more time. If they don’t, adjust the fades and then save the project.
14) Now we need to make sure that the ringtone will repeat as your phone rings. To do this, click on the button to turn the cycle region on and off. What? You don’t know what button this is? Look at the bottom of the GarageBand window. See the controls (screenshot below)? It’s the one on the far right that looks like a set of arrows chasing each other:
15) When you click that button, a bright yellow line appears above your track. Drag the right side of the line so that it matches the length of your ringtone (see below):
Doing this ensures that your ringtone will repeat over and over until you answer the phone or your caller goes to Visual Voice Mail. Do one final save of your project.
16) You’re almost there! Go to the Share menu in GarageBand and choose “Send Ringtone to iTunes.” Your project is converted to an iPhone ringtone that opens and plays in iTunes.
17) To move the ringtone to your iPhone, connect the iPhone while iTunes is open. Select the iPhone in the Devices list on the left side of iTunes, then click on the Ringtones tab. Make sure that Sync Ringtones is checked (see below), and select either All Ringtones or Selected Ringtones to sync with your iPhone. Click Sync, and your ringtone is copied to the iPhone.
Other MAC iPhone Ringtone Maker Software
- MakeiPhoneRingtone
- iToner – $15 , buy it here
PocketMac (MAC)
This is not a free application, and you can buy it from here. Check the video below to see what this app its all about:
iRinger ( WINDOWS )
iRinger creates and edits free iPhone ringtones from virtually any audio or video file.Can be downloaded from here.
Download iPhone Ringtones
- Audiko
I hope this will help you, and if you know of any other web app, method, download site for ringtones, feel free to drop it in the comments.