How to make your own ringtones; Guide for Android

This tutorial is designed to walk you through 2 easy routes of creating your own ringtones for your Android power device. Both are not hard, but the first walk-through is less technical then the second, but usually doesn't give you the professional and higher quality that the second setup would. Don't try anything that seems to be above your skill level...it could easily turn out to be harmful to your phone, and/or computer.

Less technical:
Hop on the Android Market and look up an app called Ringdroid. This app allows you to take your music library that already exists on your phone, and lets you select portions of songs and save those portions as seperate ringtones. When you load it up, it will present you with all your music...select the song you want and it will then present you with a wave form with a sized selection over it. Using the two handle bars provided, you are able to move that selection or make it bigger or smaller quite easily. You can preview the song with the music controls provided and when your done, just hit the save icon on the bottom and that's it. These ringtones save in /sdcard/media/audio/ringtones, which you can easily find using ShuffleTone, if you choose.

This video is a good tutorial on how to use the program(its pretty intuitive, I'm sure you don't really need it but just in case)
http://cnettv.cnet.com/ringdroid-google-android/9742-1_53-50004290.html

More technical:
This is my favorite way of doing it, because after set up its really easy and extremely accurate(the other one option sometimes moves the selection off by several seconds). Go onto www.download.com and search/download Audacity onto your computer. Audacity is a free audio editor with tons of effects and editing capabilities. Next you need to go this website: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3, to download the "LAME encoder". The LAME encoder allows the free software to encode MP3's which aren't natively part of the freeware distribution agreements required for freeware like Audacity. All the information on how to install it is within this page(makes it easy for you :D ).
From here its down hill, open up the music file you want by pressing File->Open. This will load up a wave form for you, which is then selectable and playable from anywhere within the song. Use your cursor to find your starting point and then click and drag to your ending point. You can then listen to what you have using the music controls, and modify your length, as you feel necessary. Once you have your ringtone selected, you can either go to File->Export Selected if you are done making that ringtone, or you can go to Edit->Trim, which will cut everything else out, and then go to Tracks->Align and Move Cursor->With Zero to align your track and make any modifications like effects from the effects menu(fade-in and fade-out will make it sound professional). Once you get to the export screen, click save and name your file and put it on you phone where ever you choose. You can then go to that location with my app, if you choose.


If you aren't tech saavy I would just stick with the first choice because it is soo easy to do, but if you want more professional sounding tones, the second way is much better. Let me know if you have anymore questions at all...I would be more than willing to help out. Good Luck!