What Is a Ringtone Creator?

by Moriah Chesler
With ringtone creators, consumers can customize how they want to receive their incoming calls on their handsets.

With ringtone creators, consumers can customize how they want to receive their incoming calls on their handsets.

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A ringtone is the "ring" that phones generally emit when an incoming call is received. The ringtone in traditional phones used to be a series of repeated rings in various frequencies. In the U.S., a single long ring followed by a pause was more common; in the U.K., a shorter double ring followed by a pause. Today, ringtones on cell phones and other mobile devices can be made up of music or other complex sounds.

Ringtone Customization

Due to the popularity of mobile phones, many mobile phone consumers want to individualize the way they receive their incoming calls, so they spend some time customizing the ringtones on their phones. Of course, some popular ringtones are used by many people, so you might find multiple people responding to their mobile phones simultaneously in the same classroom, lecture hall, theater or crowd.

Ringtone Creators

Ringtone creators have become a popular consumer product in this generation. They are basically programs that convert a song or combination of sounds or music arrangement that you compose into a ringtone file format. You can then upload this file onto your mobile phone. The first ringtone maker is credited as Harmonium, developed by Finnish programmer, Vesa-Matti Paananen, in 1997. Since then, there has been an explosion of ringtone creator and delivery services and solutions.

Ringtone Formats

Not all ringtones are formatted alike. Depending on your handset device, you may have to pick one format over another. Ringtones are divided into three groups: Old Style tones, Mono/Polyphonic tones and Real/True tones. iMelody is an old style format for EMS-enabled phones. MIDI and SP-MIDI are mono or poly-phonic formats for instrumental sounds generated from a synthesizer. The most widely-used formats are the Real/True tones, which include WAV, MP3, AMR, AAC and AU.

Ringtone Maker Sample

The Ringtone Maker is a commercial software that runs on Microsoft Windows computers and is compatible with phones that accept Truetone ringtone formats: AAC, MP3, AMR, MMF and QCP. In addition, you need to be able to transfer files from your computer to your phone by cable, infrared, Bluetooth or Internet. This ringtone maker is compatible with over 1700 handset models from Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, LG, Sanyo, and Panasonic, among others.

About the Author

Moriah Chesler began writing professionally in 1989. She started as a software engineer documenting projects and company products. She has also contributed to the "Joomla!" community magazine, blogged for Teach Me Programming and JoomlaIsrael.net and authored several e-books on Bible vocabulary. Chesler has a Bachelor of Engineering from Dartmouth College and a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics and electrical engineering from Smith College.

Photo Credits

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