My DigitalZone

Here’s a quick way of creating and sending your own ringtones to your Verizon cell phone. It’s not that difficult. You need a sound editor program to crop the source mp3 file and to change the format. I used GoldWave, which costs $49.00 for one user; however, you can download and install free software, audacity, from here. If you choose to use audacity, you also need to download and install the mp3 codec, Lame 3.96.1.

Once you picked a song and installed software, do the following.

1. Open the song in the sound editor and trim the song so that the song length is about 20 seconds.
2. Save the file as an mp3, 22050 Hz, 160 kbps, stereo. You can choose a lower kbps and mono but the quality will not be as good. The file size should be somewhere between 250kb to 350kB.
3. Close the file and change the file extension to mid so Verizon protocol will think it’s a file in a midi format. [Note: I am using LG enV3, and it worked without changing the extension.]
4. Log in to your email account. (I used my Yahoo email.)
5. Start a new email and attach the file to the email and send it to yourself.
6. Forward the email to your cell phone. The recipient’s address should be:
   XXXYYYZZZZ@vzwpix.com
   where XXXYYYZZZZ is your cellphone number including the area code. (You may need to have a Verizon pix place for this to work.)

I tried some other ways and software before but I am satisfied with the quality and ease of making/sending my own ringtone this way.

[Note]
If you are not a Verizon user, you can refer to this page for some additional info on other wireless carriers. I’m not sure how up-to-date this page is, though.