Make Your Ringtones.

Charles F. Moreira

I once asked a friend what value-added SMS services she used and she said none besides SMS.
“Not even to get ringtones, logos and screensavers?” I asked rather surprised.

“No,” she said. “With Bluetooth and most phones supporting MP3 music files these days, I can simply swap pictures, music and ringtones with others, so why bother to go downloading them.”
Well, you can create your own ringtones using software like MAGiX Ringtone Maker by MAGIX AG, which I picked up in Changi Airport sometime last year.

Don’t remember how much I paid but you can buy a boxed version of Ringtone Maker2 for US$19.99 from www.magix.com or downloadable an e-version for US$17.99, which you can install and run right away. Functionally they’re the same but unfortunately there’s no free demo versions of MAGiX Ringtone Maker2.Ringtone Maker has a four track mixer where you can either drag and drop your favourite MP3, WAV, OGG Vorbis or WMA files from your My Music or any other folder on your hard disk to each of the four tracks, rip them from your favourite CD to one of the mixer tracks, reload a previously saved arrangement or you can download a whole range of OGG Vorbis or WAV sound clips from the Magix Online Content Library but the bad news is you got to pay for them.

The red bar above the mixers lets you adjust the length of the ringtone and whenever you drag and drop a song or rip a CD track to one of the mixer tracks, an Audio Import box will pop up asking you what ringtone length you want and provide some advice.The default length is 10 seconds and you can manually enter the length, start and end points and click OK or click Cancel and adjust the length, start and stop points manually with your mouse and slide the whole selected portion to include only the part of the song you want or leave it spanning the whole track if you intend to also use it as a sound file for other uses like with your MP3 player.
The four track mixer lets you create a complex arrangement with different overlapping sounds like drum, guitar, clarinet, vocals from one or more sound clips arranged either sequentially on each of the four tracks and individually adjust their volume using the dials to the left or dragging the rectangle in the middle of the each track up or down. You can also drag the left rectangle inwards for ringtones which automatically increase to maximum volume,





Well I dragged and dropped sounds of a bell, alarm clock, car horn and a recording of me saying “Hey you, pick up the phone,” to create a composite ringtone which in this case, I saved as an MP3 file on hard disk which you then copy to your phone.Magix Ringtone Maker also lets you simultaneously export (save) the ringtone to your phone via Bluetooth or infra-red provided your PC has these facilities and is already paired with the phone. I successfully copied the ringtone simultaneously to hard disk and a Samsung SGH-X820 via Bluetooth.Alternatively, it lets you save the ringtone as a WAV, AMR or SMAF file, though the first time, you may be directed to download and install the respective convertors after which there should be no problem.

However, when saved as an SMAF (.MMF) file, it will actually save it as a WAV file and you will need an WAV to MMF convertor to convert it to the final MMF form.
For this, you can download a free WAV-to-SMAF convertor, WSC-MA2-SMAF for Windows or MAC from http://smaf-yamaha.com/tools/downloads.html, unzip and install it, and when you launch it, it will appear as a small window into which you drag and drop your WAV file.
To play it, also download and install the Yamaha Midradio player from  http://smaf-yamaha.com/tools/scas_sample.html.