One of the many welcomed features of Windows Phone 7.5, more affectionately known as Mango, is the ability to use custom ringtones. But how do you get the ringtone to the phone?
First, there are few limitations. The ringtone file must be in MP3 or WMA format, less then 40 seconds in length, less than 1mb in size and not protected with digital rights management (DRM).
There are a few ringtone apps reaching the Marketplace and we'll cover a few of them in the coming days. Most appear to be collections of ringtones that you can save to your Windows Phone but they don't allow you to create ringtones. That you can do on your own and to find out how, hit the jump.
First you need to create the audio file. Just choose an MP3 editor of your choice (Audacity isn't a bad choice) and create the 40 second snippet from the song of your choice (as long as it's no protected). When saving the snippet, set the Genre to Ringtone and save it to your Music Library. Also remember the file can not be larger than 1mb and needs to be saved as a MP3 or WMA file.
Zune should pick up on the ringtone from your Music Library and from their, it's only a matter of clicking and dragging the file to your phone. I found it easiest to find the file by sorting the music by Genre and going to Ringtones.
Once synced with your Windows Phone, the homemade ringtone will appear in your Windows Phone settings under Ringtones and Sound as Custom Ringtones.
The process is rather easy with the biggest challenge being finding a simple and straight forward audio editor that will let you save the snippets in the correct format. Once that is done, everything else is downhill.
For those who have already dabbled in creating ringtones and have an audio editor to recommend, feel free to share in the comments. And for those who've already added homemade ringtones, any issues thus far?
Update: Reader Matt Van lets us know of a website that seems to make it all very simple too: https://ringtonemaker.com/
