MP3, short for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, is a digital audio encoding compression format meant to reduce the amount of data required for audio files thereby taking up less space. It can compress big files into small ones for faster access over the internet.



Not all mobile phones, however, can support MP3 ringtones. But the good news is that as mobile technology continues to advance, more new phones are developed with an MP3 capability.

People with a creative mind and a great love for music can now make their own ringtones out of any MP3 music without paying anything. All you need are some free software and a few minutes and you can have that favorite ringtone on your cellphone.

For you to be able to create your unique ringtone, you should have a cellphone that plays MP3's and supports custom tones, a specific method to transfer the file to your phone such as through cable, Bluetooth or an email to your phone and a free sound-editing software like the highly-recommended Audacity.

You will have to edit your MP3 song first before transferring it to your phone. One song usually takes several minutes so you will only need to choose the part (at least 20 seconds) which you'd like to have as your ringtone. By using Audacity, you can cut your MP3 to the exact length you want and include any effects.

The first thing to do is download Audacity and install it. Go to www.audacity.sourceforge.net and download the audio editor. Once installed, open Audacity by clicking on the headphones icon on your desktop. You will also need the LAME compression library (lame_enc.dll) which you can also download and store permanently on your hard drive. Now from the edit menu of Audacity, choose preferences. Then on the file formats tab, under the MP3 Export Setup, click on the find library button and browse to the dll you downloaded.

From there, you can make a copy of your MP3 file and put it in a temporary folder. To open the file, drag and drop it onto Audacity. To start editing, browse through Audacity's editing tools and choose the effects you'd like to use. Highlight the part of the song you want as your ringtone. Once you're done, choose ?export as MP3? from the file menu and save it as an MP3 format on your desktop or document folder.

Transfer the tone to your phone by cable, Bluetooth or flashcard connection or by sending it to your phone's address via email. Once your phone receives the edited music file, you can set it as a custom ringtone depending on the model of your cellphone.

If you don't fancy downloading and installing new software to your PC another way of creating MP3 ringtones is to use an online service such as IWFR.net (I Want Free Ringtones) which provides a free MP3 to ringtone converter where you simply upload your MP3 of choice, choose the section you want as your ringtone and then download direct to your cell phone via WAP connection.