How to install custom ringtones on your A970 - WORKS!

[El_Temido]

While this is off topic from the thread I will give you some guidelines. To start with I own a recording studio and have a number of excellent but very expensive audio editing tools. That said I don't even know of a free audio editor with the exception of cooledit96. They exist but don't ask me what they are.

Anyway you need an editor or combination of editors with three abilities.
1. Convert an mp3 to a wave file.
2. Edit the wave file to the desired length.
3. Convert the wave back to mp3.
(editors that say they edit mp3 are still doing steps 1 through 3 even though they don't describe it that way.)

That will get you in the territory of having a compatible file to put on your phone. Get that far and we can get into the bitpim thing as outlined at the beginning of the thread.

So, does this mean that you have to convert the song to some type of special format, or do regular mp3's work? I have a bunch of mp3's that I had on my 8000 that I would LOVE to put on my 970, so just wanting to know if I need to convert them to any special type, or just put them on my phone? Thanks for all the work that has gone into this, it is way awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!

[NYCZMOSTILLEST]

While this is off topic from the thread I will give you some guidelines. To start with I own a recording studio and have a number of excellent but very expensive audio editing tools. That said I don't even know of a free audio editor with the exception of cooledit96. They exist but don't ask me what they are.

Anyway you need an editor or combination of editors with three abilities.
1. Convert an mp3 to a wave file.
2. Edit the wave file to the desired length.
3. Convert the wave back to mp3.
(editors that say they edit mp3 are still doing steps 1 through 3 even though they don't describe it that way.)

That will get you in the territory of having a compatible file to put on your phone. Get that far and we can get into the bitpim thing as outlined at the beginning of the thread.

I have Cool Edit and Winamp and this is what I do:

As said by Western_Son, I converted the mp3 file to wav. I used winamp to do this. then i put the wav file in Cooledit and edit it down to what i want. Now here's the question: What settings should I put it in, meaning, stereo or mono, bit, etc..? Also I have never been sucessful in switching the wav file back to mp3 using winamp. Anyone know how to do this? And for anyone that has Cooledit or another wave editing program similar, is there a way to do it directly on Cooledit instead of using another outside program such as Winamp?

[snrsuave]

I used a free program called Audacity. The only thing I did with the mp3 file was to cut out the portion that I wanted to set as my ringtone, and then I saved it as an mp3, but changed the bitrate to 48 instead of 128. This gave me a small, short mp3 file. I then transferred the file to my phone with Bitpim in the correct folder, rebooted phone, and set as my ringtone. Worked like a charm. Make sure the mp3 file you transfer doesn't have a long filename, though. I think the long filename of the first song I tried made it so the song can't be deleted from my song list.

[mbaverizon]

I used a free program called Audacity. The only thing I did with the mp3 file was to cut out the portion that I wanted to set as my ringtone, and then I saved it as an mp3, but changed the bitrate to 48 instead of 128. This gave me a small, short mp3 file. I then transferred the file to my phone with Bitpim in the correct folder, rebooted phone, and set as my ringtone. Worked like a charm. Make sure the mp3 file you transfer doesn't have a long filename, though. I think the long filename of the first song I tried made it so the song can't be deleted from my song list.

but do they show up in your tunes and tones?????

[pmezo]

i downloaded audacity but the free version does let me use anything. what do you do to cut down the files? Any tips you could give me and does it actually work for making ringtones?

[snrsuave]

They show up and "Tunes and Tones" and I am able to set them as ringtones for calls, but not for alerts like for a text message or voicemail. To cut down the files, I just used the selection tool to select the portion of the mp3 I wanted as my ringtone, and then "cut" from the edit menu. I then pasted the portion I cut out into a new file I opened, and then selected "export as mp3" from the file menu.

I guess you could also just select the portion of the file you want to be your ringtone, and then choose "export selection as mp3" from the file menu instead.

Like I said earlier, you have to make sure that you go to "Preferences" under the file menu, and then under the "File Formats" tab, change the bitrate for mp3s to 64 or 48. That still maintains decent quality for a ringtone but helps cut down the size of the file a lot.

P.S. Audacity might complain about needing a file named lame_enc.dll in order to create mp3 files. All Audacity needs is to know where that dll file is so that it can use to encode your new mp3 files. On my computer, the file was already there. I use Winamp to play my mp3 files, and the dll file was located at /Program Files/Winamp/Plugins

[pmezo]

it doesnt let me change that option... is this because i am using the free version? The bitrate rate for mp3 export is set at 128 and cant be changed. Also what is the longest clip (how many seconds) that you can make for a ringtone. By the way thanks for the help, definitely appreciated.

[snrsuave]

Hmm... Maybe there is a different Audacity. The one I have is open-source (free). There is no buy option. You can get it here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Let's all try to use the same program first, and then see where we go from there.

[pmezo]

nevermind im starting to get it... just took me a while im new to this. So all i need to do is change it to that bitrate, select the portion of the mp3 that i want, copy and paste it in a new wav and export it as a mp3 and thats it? That will work for a ringtone file? Also how long can these files be?

also what counts as a long name for a title? 10 characters? 20?

[mbaverizon]

i hope somebody gets the alerts working for ringers????

[tmansgc]

I never change anything, I just drag the full mp3 to the phone. I can do it other ways but I am too lazy

[snrsuave]

You don't really have to change the bitrate. It just makes the file a lot smaller, since you only have limited space for your ringtones. As far as the filename goes... just try to keep it as short as possible to avoid problems.

I was able to fix the problem I was having with being unable to erase an mp3 file I transferred to the phone. Here are some interesting things I found while trying to fix this:

1. The original file I transferred was named "Various Artists - Mad World (Alternative Mix).mp3
2. When browsing the file on the phone, it was labeled as "Various Artists - Mad world ("
3. I used Bitpim to browse the filesystem, and found a file named "current_prefs.db". Did a hexdump on the file, and right at the beginning the file says "This file contains an SQLite 2.1 database".
4. I used a progam off the internet called "EasySQLite 2" to view the current_prefs.db file.
5. Once in there, I found that my mp3 file was listed as "Various Artists - Mad World (Alternativ"
6. I took the orginal mp3 on my computer and renamed it to "Various Artists - Mad World (Alternativ" and transferred it to the phone.
7. Went into "Tunes and Tones" and erased the file, and it finally disappeared!!

It seems that there can be differences in the way the song displays the name of the song on the list, and the actual filename the song is stored as on the phone. I think that is why I couldn't erase the song in the beginning.

While looking in the current_prefs.db file, I found all sorts of other stuff. It seems that this file stores all the settings that you set up on the phone. It even has things like the user lock code (usually the last 4 digits of your phone number) able to be viewed. I tried to find the "secret 10 digit code for bluetooth" in there, but I had no luck. Perhaps someone with some SQL experience can look at the file and see what kind of stuff is in there. I don't know anything about SQL, so all the data meant nothing to me, but I thought I saw some things that I didn't see in the menu on the phone. Settings like:
1. "pref_msgs_set_fnt_sz" (Font size setting)
2. "range_tones_preloaded"
3. "range_tones_downloaded"
4. "range_tones_recorded"
5. "range_tones_from_mms"
6. "range_tones_from_drm"
7. "range_tones_from_ems"
8. "pref_front_bklt_dur" (Duration for front lcd backlight?)
9. "pref_tones_preloaded"
10. "pref_fnt_sz" (font size?)
11. Something about profiles, but it's empty
12. "dynamic_range_els" (This lists the 2 songs i downloaded from GIN, and the one I transferred to my phone in the "drm" folder
13. "pref_alert_txtmsgtones" (Tones for txt messages?)
14. "pref_alert_pixmsgtones" (tones for pix message?)
15. "pref_alert_vmailtones" (voicemail tones?)

These are just some things of interest I found in there. I also viewed the file "nvm-security" with notepad and it seemds that file houses the code to get into the secret menu (000000), your user lock code (last 4 on your phone number), and some weird e-mail address (samsung01@sprintpcs.com).

Anyways... sorry for the long post, but I thought I would share what I found while I was bored today. Maybe someone who actually knows what they're doing can look at all this stuff and make some sense out of it.

[daiphuoc]

sorry to be off topic, im just a little new to this. So youre saying bitpim doesnt edit songs i have on my computer already to the size i would need to use them as a ringer? If its not free, how would i go about doing this? It seems like a alot of people are making their own ringtones - what program is everyone using to do this? Thanks for the help.

wavepad and it's free

[pmezo]

how big can these files be to work as ringtones? 30 seconds or is it done by file size? Also if the lower bitrate saves space... wouldnt one of those memory cards that saves data (forgot what they are called) take away that problem and memory wouldnt be an issue? So many questions...

[snrsuave]

For you to be able to set your own mp3 as a ring tone, it has to me in the specific folder "melodies/my/drm". This is a folder that is in the filesystem of the phone. Therefore, you cannot use ringtoesn taht are stored on the memory card. They must be in that drm folder to work. At least until somebody figures out how to do this differently...