Create ringtones and edit audio

Written by Roshi

Whether you have a basic Nokia phone or a flashy smartphone, it is your ringtone, which will be noticed even from a distance. There are hundreds of websites, which offer free and paid ringtones for download, but it will be more interesting if we can customize ringtones according to our choice. How about creating a ringtone of your favorite MP3 number from your netbook with Audacity?

Although downloading hefty software on my netbook is an absolute no for me, I do have better online alternatives or slim software, which are free and more useful. Audacity is a simple, open source software for audio or sound editing and is available for free download on the Internet. It is not only useful for artists, sound technicians, and musicians, but also for those who don’t have any music knowledge and just want to experiment with their mobile ringtones.

Here is how you can easily create a ringtone of your favorite music track and do simple sound editing on the go with Audacity.

Go to Audacity website and download its compatible version for your operating system. Audacity is available for download on Mac, Windows and Linux as well. Run the 2.1 MB installer file on your netbook.

Audacity requires a LAME compression library dll file to edit MP3 files. Download from here and save it to a proper location on your netbook's hard drive. Then go to the ‘Edit’ menu of Audacity, select ‘Preferences’ and select ‘File formats’ tab. Click on the ‘Find Library’ button under the 'MP3 Export Setup' section and browse the LAME compression library dll file. Now Audacity can import the MP3 files from your netbook.

Start the Audacity program and import the file you want to convert to ringtone by clicking on ‘Project’ and then ‘Import file’. Audacity supports a range of file formats such as MP3, WAV, AIFF, OGG and FLAC.

When the file is loaded into the program, it will be seen as a set of waveforms to represent the sonic profile of the music clip. One row of platform specifies the mono audio file, while two stands for stereo format.

Most of the mobile phones have a restriction of ringtone playback time. Audacity allows you to select a portion of the waveform or song to be converted into a ringtone. It is helpful for trimming the advert or removing the first few minutes of the songs. I found this feature very useful. The timeline on the waveform represents the song duration, which can be zoomed with the help of the zoom tool.

When you have selected the song duration, select the 'Edit' menu and click on the 'Trim' option. After trimming, you will get the selected part of your MP3 track as ringtone and you can listen to it again by using the player buttons.

If you are creative with your tones, you can use effects for your tones using ‘Effects’ menu. You can use fade in/fade out effects or change the pitch, speed, tempo of the song. There are dozens of effects to choose from including equalization and compression.

When you are done with editing, you can export the file in the format compatible to your mobile phone. You can export the file in WAV, OGG or MP3 format or multiple formats at the same time.

You can now transfer your customized tone to your phone using Bluetooth or data cable. Audacity also allows you to record your own voice or another song using its record option. You can do further editing on your recorded voice and add a background score to add to its effects.

Audacity is a useful software for simple audio editing like ringtone creation or even technically advanced sound editing. I enjoyed creating a customized version of my favorite track, which was otherwise costing me around half a dollar through the network provider.

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