Many modern smartphones can turn any mp3 or music file supported by the phone into a ringtone. That’s unlike it was years ago where you had to create ringtones before you could use them as the phone’s ringtone.

Free Ringtone Maker is a free program for the Windows operating system that can turn any mp3 file on the computer into a ringtone.

There are still situations where you may want to customize a ringtone, for instance if you do not want the ringtone to start at the beginning of a song, but somewhere in the middle.

And that’s exactly the situation where Free Ringtone Maker comes into play. You can load any mp3 from the computer into the application.

Once you have loaded the mp3 into the program you can cut it. This is done by moving the beginning and end sliders to the locations that you want the ringtone to begin and end. You can click the play button anytime in the menu to listen to the current selection.

The ringtone is not limited to 30 seconds, you can increase or decrease the playtime if you like, and configure fade in and fade out options separately.

Once you are done you hit the Next button to open a save file browser to save the ringtone to the computer.

The best feature in my opinion is the simplicity of the operation. While it is possible to use a heavyweight music editor like Audacity for the same job, it usually takes a longer time getting adjusted to. Free Ringtone Maker only supports the creation of ringtones and that without a steep learning curve.

You can download Free Ringtone Maker from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The search works by entering an artist, band, song or album title in the search form. Tonzr will search its database for matches and display them on search result pages. Only four ringtones are displayed per page which is the greatest weakness of the search engine. Each ringtone can be played directly on the search results page. It will play for 30 seconds and stop afterwards.

Tonzr provides the means to send the free ringtone to the cell phone in various ways including sending an sms containing the download link pointing to the mp3 ringtone, sending it as an mms or downloading the ringtone to the computer to transfer it from there to the cell phone.

The easiest way for most users will probably be to download ringtones to the computer first and transfer them to their cell phone from there. Currently the SMS and MMS options are only working with selected US carriers. Everyone else has to use the pc download option to download ringtones anyway at this moment in time.

But some cell phones do not provide this opportunity yet. One way for owners of such cell phones is to use a free cell phone ringtone creator to create the ringtone. The website My MusicRings does require registration but does not send a verification email on the other hand and is therefor perfectly suited for creating a free ringtone in no time.. The service itself could not be more straightforward.

The user uploads an mp3 from his hard drive to the ringtone creation service in step 1. He will then have the option to select 29 seconds of the song for his ringtone by moving a slider on the waveform back and forth.

All that’s left is to pick a title and artist for the cell phone ringtone. The ringtone will be created and the option to download it to the computer or to send it to the cell phone is given on the final page of the process.

An url for cell phones is provided as well which can be used to access the page with the cell phone directly. Interestingly enough the pages can be shared with friends which also means that anyone can access all previously created cell phone ringtones by manipulating the url of the service.

Changing the ID from 4900 to another number will load the ring tone with the corresponding number.

Update: The site is no longer available. A good alternative with free ringtones is Cellsea.

The method is pretty straightforward but requires a bit of manual work. Start by right-clicking the song in iTunes that you want to create a ringtone from and select Get Info from the context menu. Click on the Options tab in the new window and pick a start and stop time for the ringer. It has to be exactly 30 seconds or less so consider this. Click Ok when you are done.

Now right-click the song and select Convert Selection to AAC from the menu. Now open your iTunes music library and drag and drop the newly created song to another location on the hard drive and delete the song in the iTunes library.

Now change the extension of the song from .m4a to .m4r and add it again to iTunes. You can either import it from within iTunes or double-click it if iTunes is the program of choice to open that file.

Now that everything is installed go to Youtube and search for music that you like. Good starting points if you do not know exactly what you are looking for are the top 100 single charts of the United States or the Top 40 singles of the UK. Other options are Amazon or other CD online shops. What I do then is visit Youtube and either enter the artist’s name or song in the search box. This should be enough to find the song that you are looking for, you sometimes have to sort the results by date instead of relevancy to find what you are looking for.

Number one song is Basshunter with NOW YOU’RE GONE in the UK. A search for Basshunter on Youtube revealed the video Basshunter Now You’re Gone.

I save the video with the flv extension. Now I need to use FLV Extract which I have installed earlier. I only check Audio in the interface and drag and drop the saved Youtube video into it. The result is a mp3 audio file. I can already play the audio file and add it to my mp3 player or mobile phone.

Playback starts automatically and I can check that the quality is good enough.

Some mobile phones can already use this mp3 file as a ringtone, some prefer a 30 second version of it. We will now use Audacity to create a 30 second version of the audio file. Load the mp3 into Audacity, you see a graphical representation of it in Audacity shortly thereafter.

Editing a audio file with Audacity is very easy. Check the timeline on top of the audio stream. Left-Click at the 30 seconds position and drag the mouse to the end of the audio file. Now press delete to remove that part which leaves us with a 30 second sample of the song by Basshunter.

You can also cut in the middle or use the end instead if you like to use that part as the ringtone. Not a problem with audacity. Click on File > Export as MP3 and save the file again. Congratulations, you have created a 30 second ringtone.

First, you do not have to pay for the ringtone. You probably have to pay for the CD instead or simply record the songs from internet radio instead. So, best case you pay nothing. Second, you are free to create the ringtone from any mp3 file you have on your pc and you are free to take any 20 or so seconds from that mp3 file which makes it unique. All you need is the freeware Audacity and a method to connect the mobile phone to your computer.

Here’s where Audacity comes in. Using the free, open source, cross-platform sound editor, we’ll trim your MP3 down to the exact 20 seconds you want and add any effects as well.

1. Download Audacity, install and fire it up.
2. Audacity can’t edit MP3′s out of the box, it needs what’s called the LAME compression library first. Download the lame_enc.dll file here and put it somewhere permanent on your hard drive.
3. From Audacity’s Edit menu, choose Preferences. On the File Formats tab, under “MP3 Export Setup,” hit the Find Library button and browse to the dll you just downloaded
4. Now the fun begins. Make a copy of your MP3 file and stow it in a temp folder somewhere other than where your music player will find it. Drag and drop it onto Audacity to open it. Using the Zoom and play buttons, find the 20 seconds of your song you want to be your ringtone. (It helps to zoom in so the time appears in 5 second increments.) Use the select tool to highlight the 20 second ring, and from the Edit menu, choose “Trim.” Now you’ve got your ringtone.
   
5. If you’re feeling bold and creative, browse around Audacity’s editing tools, especially the Effect menu. I like to add a “Fade In” effect to the first 7 seconds of my tone so that it doesn’t blast full-volume right away, if I’m in a quieter place and I’ve forgotten to silence the ringer.
6. When you’re done editing, from the File menu, choose “Export as MP3.” Save it as, say, ringtone.mp3.
7. Now, transfer the tone to your phone, either by corded or Bluetooth connection to your computer, or by emailing it to your phone’s address.
8. Once the file is on your phone, set it as your custom ringtone. How to do this will depend on your phone model; on Nokia phones running Symbian you can do it in the Profiles area. On my Sprint LG, it’s in the Settings area, under Sounds, Ringers.

source: lifehacker