Talk:Tutorial - Making Ringtones

Informal Research
Peter 06Aug14: As discussed earlier I have been conducting some informal research regarding modern PDA/computer phones.
 * Gale 09Aug14: I think you should be able to find precise information on file format support for these modern devices. What about Blackberry and Nokia (which used to be sold in large numbers) and Windows Phone/Mobile (the former is becoming more important).

iPhone
Apple apparently makes it hard for users to install custom-made ringtones, they attempt to drive you to the iTunes store so that you have to purchase (admittedly cheaply) ringtones. There are apps for iPhone that enable you to create a custom ringtone (Ringtone Design from Blackout Labs appears to be one of the most popular). I imagine that iPhone users are more likely to turn to apps like that rather than mess around with Audacity. iPhone appears to able to run MP3 and AAC ringtones (and probably WAV too - but I have no data on this).

Androids
Samsung (market leader for Android) also attempts to sell additional ringtones to the user (it comes with a whole slew already installed). My "mystery shopper" tells me that on her Samsung Galaxy(s) she can just point the ringtone selector at any audio file in any format that is on her phone.

Formats
A lot of the focus in the earlier versions of this tutorial was on obscure audio formats, mainly because with earlier phones the O/s and storage were very limited and required small compressed files. It would appear with modern phones that most audio formats can be used and there is no requirement for the file to be mono. I suspect too that modern phones are more than capable of dealing the EQ, compression and limiting all by themselves (but I have no data for this) and that thus that section in our tutorial my be redundant for modern phones.

Forum
I did some searching on the forum - it's been a very long time now since anybody posted about obscure formats or difficulties getting their edited ringtone onto their phone. In fact recent ringtone posts are quite thin altogether.

The way ahead
It could be argued that we retain the tutorial as it is now so that it caters for users of older phones (a declining market - and most users of those will most likely have had their phone for a while now and dealt with the ringtones they require.

We could consider removing the EQ, compression and limiting material from the tutorial - but that will make it a little thin.

We could take the extreme view that this is no longer a required topic, a topic of minority interest, that we remove it from the Manual altogether (we could consider relocating it in the Wiki)
 * Gale 09Aug14: Note that Alexa claims that the search term "Audacity ringtone" is the most common term that drives users to the Forum. Yet this translates into few Forum posts. Perhaps they are searching for a ringtone, not how to make it? Or perhaps this tutorial is better than you think it is and they don't need to ask after coming here.
 * Peter 09Aug14: Well I did post a thread a year or so ago(on the forum IIRC) about a Swiss friend of mine who had successfully used the tutorial - so maybe it is better than I think - I'm glad if that is the case :-))

Discussion moved from ednote on the page
Gale 23Dec13: This tutorial was imported from Wiki but not completely updated for 2.x. I've fixed several issues but it needs reviewing properly.
 * Peter 2Aug14: I'm not a user of these new-fangled phones, but my "mystery shopper" is, so I got her to give this a roadtest. Her basic comment was "Why with a modern phone would you need to bother with this? My phone (Samsung Galaxy) will just use any old audio file in any old audio format that I have in my music folder for the phone".  I suspect that this may well be the case with most modern phones.  Bear in mind that this tutorial was developed on the Wiki some while ago when mobile phones and their ringtones were more limited.  I note that this tutorial says "Phones supporting music ringtones tend to be more expensive models or PDA phones" - surely almost all mobile phones are PDAs now - except those that Which readers and old people buy ;-)   I have made a couple of detail tweaks: adding menu spans and correcting a changed menu syntax for "Trim".
 * Peter 04Aug14: following the road-test by my "mystery shopper" (observing her confusion) I took a long hard look at this page. I trimmed out a lot of what I perceive to be a lot of unnecessary and almost certainly well-dated material and dis some restructuring.  What we have now is, I think, a more sensible tutorial on the use of Audacity to make ringtones.  I am planning to do some further research tonight with iPhones using friends on the capabilities of using user-made ringtones with those phones.
 * Gale 04Aug14: This isn't P1 so I cannot spend a long time on it but my impression is that you cut too much out.
 * First time users probably do need help with changing sample rate and especially with creating 64 kbps WAV or other files that require changing the WAV bit depth. Many users can't find the Options button in Export File as you know.
 * Peter 04Aug14: Ok, I added the cut-out details as an examples page. This retains the detail but keeps this page shorter hopefully avoiding TLDR.  There is actually quite a lot of detail on the Export Audio Dialog if folk bother to read the detail.
 * I'm fine with losing the link to Mobile Ringtone Converter, but I don't think it's sufficient to say to use other apps for conversion to other formats then not say what apps those might be. Especially true when most easily found converters are malware. Most users would probably be better off simply to install FFmpeg for Audacity, but we should recommend a select *few*, *safe* converters for the above reason. External links to other software still have some validity in the Manual. After all you are happy to promote ClickRepair (commercial software) and iTunes in the Manual.
 * Peter 04Aug14: Well sorry but I, for one, am not prepared to explore and maintain such potentially dangerous links - especially after a narrow escape trapped by McAfee earlier today. I still am of the belief that most modern phones don't need "funny formats" anyway, but can usefully use standard WAV or MP3 files including in stereo - further research on usable formats pending.
 * Gale 04Aug14: You are welcome to post your research results but obviously any such research would have to find out how many phones are still around that need e.g. 64 kbps mono WAV. If those are at all common then clearly we need steps for that. The malware risk is exactly why we should not just say "find a converter yourself" as you currently suggest but should link to a *few*, *safe*, *tested* ones. You don't have to do that if you are not willing to. Java required by ClickRepair is a significant security risk. Please research it if you don't believe me.
 * Gale 04Aug14: ... people with Apple smartphones may simply prefer M4A/M4R anyhow just because it's Apple's format.

