Get Free Ringtones or Make Ringtones from Your Own Music

[milominderbinder]

See the Palm Pre Tips and Tricks for many other tips.

There are literally a million free MP3 ringtones from websites such as CrackBerry, Freesound, Ringtone-Mania, Tonzr, Brinked, CellSea, Myxer, or zedge. You can use Filecoaster to download ringtones Over The Air but that is so much harder than using a computer and so limited.

Someone has even taken all of the Pre ringtones and made them loud enough to hear. Plus here are the Treo Ringtones converted over for the Pre. We also have a Wallpaper Forum. In addition almost every site listed for free ringtones has 320x480 wallpaper.

But what if you want to make your own?

It is easy and even fun to make ringtones for your Palm Pre from your existing MP3's.

The Pre can make a ringtone from any song on the Pre. Just tap Launcher>Sounds>Ringtone Add in the lower-left and choose a ringtone.

The problem is the the ringtone will choose the first 30 seconds of the song. You invariably would not choose that part and it is often fading up so the first part can't be heard.

But you can easily choose just the part of the song you want and set the volume you want if you know the tricks!

Here are the key things you need in an audio file editor to do this:
1. An easy way to cut out just the right section, about 30 seconds long
2. An easy way to fade-in or fade-out, adjust loudness, etc.
3. It should be free and easy with no learning curve.

For Windows or Macs, Audacity is all of the above. Here is how easy it is to customize MP3's into good ringtones.

Let's start with an easy one. Take the Older Phone ringtone that came with your Pre and make a new version that is loud enough to hear. The first thing is to find and edit the Older Phone mp3 file.

1. Connect your Palm Pre to your computer as a USB device using the USB cable.
2. Use Windows Explorer or an equivalent to find files in your Pre.
3. Open the Subdirectory "Ringtones".
4. Right click on Older Phones and click copy.
5. Go to your computer's hard drive, right click a subdirectory you want to use and choose paste.
6. Open Audacity and choose the Older Phone file to edit.

Editing the file is easy. For instance the installed Pre ringtones are too soft. To make "Older Phone" louder, click Effects>Amplify. Try a level and listen to it. Click Edit>Undo if you don’t like it. Try highlighting just sections and making changes. When you are done, save it as "Older Phone 2" so as not to confuse the two.

Safely remove the USB device and you should have a new ringtone, Older Phone 2, on your Pre. Check out your new ringtone on your Palm!

You can do the same with any mp3 that you have on your computer. Just use your audio editor to find your music subdirectory on your computer and choose one of your songs. If you imported your music using iTunes they may be hidden. (Real or others programs let you keep your own music.) You want to clip out about 30 seconds to make your ringtone. Then copy the new ringtone you create using the USB Drive feature above to the Pre ringtones subdirectory.

One other cool trick. You can also change the email and calendar notification sounds. Use the Homebrew Apps Gallery: My Notification.

Have fun! Post any questions.

- Craig

Here are a few of my favorites: Ringtones and Cricket Alerts.

[Bujin]

I have nothing constructive to add, except love your username - great book!

[realistdreamer]

Audacity costs MONEY. I searched and found Wavosaur (loaded MP3) encoder and turned a 9MB Amazon MP3 download into a 35 second, 413 KB ringtone. Problem is it only plays from the speaker (not BT) and I always have the phone on vibrate.

[helenrips]

On my Mac, I use mp3trimmer, which is a basic trimmer, then sync through iTunes.

[rbgrules]

Another way to do it is to create a drm free iphone ringtone and then just drag the ringtone from itunes and place it in the Pre's ringtone folder(not in itunes through windows explorer). There are tons of sites that make iphone ringers

[LynnL_]

Originally Posted by realistdreamer

Audacity costs MONEY.

Audacity is free.

[jp22382]

I use Audacity, find whatever I want to use (song, movie, streaming video) and record a clip, export as mp3.

Simple, easy, free.

[Turbo-SC]

nice, thanks for the info guys!

[sward78]

Great info! Thanks OP!

[DirkBelig]

I saw on another thread that there is a limit of 50 ringtones in the folder. Can you place them in subfolders like you can with wallpaper pictures?

[Solid_MTB]

thanks for the info.

[VXXXJesterXXXV]

Another option, though maybe not as streamlined is to go to a site like phonezoo.com and upload your MP3 to there. You can then select up to 30 seconds that you want to use, adjust the volume and what not and then you have two options. One option is to have it sent to your phone for download, though i don't know if they support the Pre yet. the second option is to save your 30 second clip to your desktop and then you can drag and drop it to the ringtone folder.

To be honest I will likely use the OPs method, but figured I would throw this out there too.

[Riebs]

Originally Posted by jp22382

I use Audacity, find whatever I want to use (song, movie, streaming video) and record a clip, export as mp3.

Simple, easy, free.

+1

[EeZeEpEe]

Any Mac users can just use Garageband 4.1.1 (How to instructions) or later to trim and convert. If you "Send ringtone to iTunes" you'll end up with a .m4r file extension. I'm not sure if this works with the Pre but copying it over and changing it to .m4a should work fine.

[boston_ant]

Hey I tried audacity but my clips keep coming out scratchy and just plain awful sounding. They sound like I tried using the audio recorder that comes standard on a PC. I'm not doing anything special to the clip to tweak it, it's sounding like this right when i clip the part I want and preview it. Anyone know what I may be doing wrong to cause this? Any help would be appreciated.

[RhinoDoc]

I used Audacity to create a new ringtone and it worked great, but I have a question - can I do the OPPOSITE of what the OP said, make a QUIETER ringtone? My alarm clock just about wakes the neighbors. I am at work and won't have a chance to try it until tonight, but instead of amplify, can I de-amplify a tone so it is quieter and then use that with the alarm clock?

[Addie_Goodvibes]

I run Linux at home and use audacity excellent lightweight program for music mixing ringtones ect..

[remoleeda]

Originally Posted by RhinoDoc

I used Audacity to create a new ringtone and it worked great, but I have a question - can I do the OPPOSITE of what the OP said, make a QUIETER ringtone? My alarm clock just about wakes the neighbors. I am at work and won't have a chance to try it until tonight, but instead of amplify, can I de-amplify a tone so it is quieter and then use that with the alarm clock?

The "Amplify..." effect in Audacity lets you do both. You can specify how much you want the peak decibel value to go down by (or just use the slider), preview the new "volume" or just apply it to your alarm tone and listen to the whole piece (you can always undo!)

[adewitt2]

Originally Posted by realistdreamer

Audacity costs MONEY. I searched and found Wavosaur (loaded MP3) encoder and turned a 9MB Amazon MP3 download into a 35 second, 413 KB ringtone. Problem is it only plays from the speaker (not BT) and I always have the phone on vibrate.

Audacity is a free app.

[ChicagoSandy]

I tried all the tricks in this thread (Audacity, GarageBand), to no avail, and finally had to use mp3Trimmer to cut a 30 sec. snippet of a song that I had in iTunes and saved it as a new song and then a new playlist which I synced via Missing Sync to my Pre. I then went to the Help app on my Pre and clicked on "How do I select a song as my ringtone." It is of no use whatsoever--it says to open Sounds & Ringtones, select the current ringtone, then click on a song to make it the current ringtone. But when I go into my Music folder and click on the snippet I synced, it just plays and then moves on to the next song! Now, either I am an idiot or the Help app blows big time.

PLEASE HELP ME AND WALK ME THROUGH THIS STEP-BY-STEP!!! Sorry for shouting, but I have been at this for three hours and cannot get it right! (All this started when the guy at the Sprint Store, who'd assured me he could get all the data from my old Samsung phone into the Pre, tried and found that Sprint and/or Palm hadn't worked out that program yet). And apparently the geniuses at Palm haven't figured out how to allow users to buy third-party ringtones--you can buy "call tones" for your callers to hear instead of ringing when they call you, (the stupidest idea I ever heard of, sort of cellular music-on-hold) but not ringtones!!!!

As I said, HELP!!!!!!!