Back in December 2008 I posted a link to a tutorial on how to create iPhone ringtones. Which worked well, as long as you had the patience to pin point the timings of a track. Well since then I have had to get a little bit more ‘technical’ with my ringtone creation. Mainly because of the music I was trying to clip.. So I thought it was about time I put another tutorial together, but this time a little bit more in depth, covering all the aspects of clipping using the wave display.
Now, all you need to do is locate your MP3WavSound file through the built in menu system, or drag and drop it into the dark area in between the menu bar and status bar. Once it’s done loading the music file you should be presented with a window which looks like this (obviously this will differ for each sound file)
Using the built in menu bar you can play the track, and locate the section you want to clip. Remembering that most devices using 30 seconds of the clip for the tone. Once you have found the section you want click on the wave table where it starts, and drag you mouse whilst keeping an eye on the field under the ‘Length’ radio button until you have grabbed 30 seconds worth. You should notice the highlighted section will turn a slightly darker grey colour:
With the section highlighted, if you press the ‘Play’ button Audacity will play the section you have selected. If you are not happy with it you can move the highlighted section back and forth with your mouse until you find a section you like.
Once done simply click Edit > Cut in the menu bar, or ctrl + x on your windows keyboard (cmd + x on Mac) to cut out the section of track. Now click File > New to open a fresh project window and paste in your clipping. (Edit > Paste etc)
Check you have clipped the correct part using the play button, and once you are happy click File > Export. Give it a meaningful name and select a location for the file, in the format drop down box select “M4A (AAC) Files (FFmpeg)” and click ok.
Once the export has completed, locate the file and rename the extension from .m4a to .m4r.
Now open iTunes, select the ‘Ringtones’ sections and drag in your newly created .m4r file. All that’s left to do now is sync you iPhone, select the new file in the settings menu and your done.
So hopefully, you will never pay for a ringtone again 
I think it’s fair to say you can tell a lot about someone by the music they listen to, and the device they use to listen to it with. Being a big Mac fan, I quite like iTunes – now don’t get me wrong. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not too bad.. However – one area I think iTunes is really bad in, is the sorting and maintaining of large imported libraries.
EDIT: This post is very old, and some\all of the information may now be out of date
For all of you Windows to Mac converts who are missing Windows Media, player here’s something you may be pleased to know. Windows Media Player 9 has been tested and proved fully functional in Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard).
The clever boffins over at jiwire have recently released an update to their popular iPhone based Wi-Fi hotspot locator. The previous version was close to making it to my top ten list, but just had a little something missing.. This one however, really does seem to tick all the boxes for me!
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