Android Ringtones - How to get/make them.

Ringtones. You would imagine the your options for ringtones would be so much better than on a normal non-smart phone, and you would be correct in that assumption. There are multiple ways to get ringtones and even multiple ways to make your own ringtones onto your phone.

For starters, the way that android organizes his ringtone management is (in my opinion) very well laid out. On your memory card there are a bunch of folders.  If you look very carefully you will see a folder called "media".  If you don't have one, create it.  then inside of that folder you should have an "audio" and a "video" folder.  Then inside of the "audio" folder you should see the below group of folders "alarms" "music" "notifications" and "ringtones".  This is the place on the SD card where the Android OS looks for sounds.

So if you want to make a tone that is for a phone call put it in the "ringtones" folder.  For an alarm put it in the "alarms folder, etc.  Modern android phones (version 2 and up) will support multiple file formats.  The main ones are .ogg and mp3.  So you can manually cut down a music file with a desktop application and copy it to your phone's memory card in this folder and you are good to go.  But wouldn't you like something easier?

The easiest method of making a ringtone is to do it right through the "Music" icon that is preloaded on your phone.  Let's say you are listening to your MP3 collection and you hear a song that you want to make your ringtone.  No worries, just press the menu button at the bottom of your phone (while the song is playing) andyou will see an icon called "Set as Ringtone" (see image below). That's it.  It will do the dirty work for you - create the tone and set it as your default.  Can't ask for an easier option. Although there is a pretty big downfall to this.  It creates the tone just for the first 30 or 40 seconds of the song.

When your phone rings you don't always want the intro of the song (although the beginning of the pictured Radiohead song is pretty badass).  Let's say you want the tone to start at around 2:42 when the hard part kicks in.  So you need a solution that will let you pick that certain chunk of the song and make that your tone.  That's where RingDroid comes in.

RingDroid is an app that lets you create a start and stop point of an MP3 file and turn it into a ringtone/alarm/notification.  All right on the device, Plus it gives you an option to set it as your default tone.  The best part of the app is that it is a FREE app available from the Android Market, or through the Google Code site. See the image below:

	Name: RingDroid
	Description: Create ringtones from your own music library, or record new ones on the fly! The original open-source ringtone editor for Android, first published in 2008 and downloaded by millions of users worldwide. Create your own ringtone, alarm, or notification sound from an existing audio file, or record a new one directly on the device. This application is compatible with most Android devices running system versions 1.6 ('donut') through 2.3.x ('gingerbread').
	Download Link: http://goo.gl/x08x0

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