Audacity is a free, open source software used for recording and editing music. It is available for download from Sourceforge and is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. One of the many things you can do with it is alter music that you already have on your computer so that they can be used as Ringtones.

Making the ringtones involve simply shortening the songs to about 30 seconds (30 kilobytes), saving it, and uploading it to your phone.

Download Audacity and LAME mp3 Encoder (necessary to save the file in the mp3 format).

Unzip and install Audacity.

Unzip the LAME encoder and make note of where you saved the folder (I put it in the Audacity folder under a "Lame" subfolder).

Open Audacity and choose File >> Open and select the song you want to use as a ringtone.

Edit the song by deleting sections of the mp3 you DON'T want. Do this by holding down the left mouse button and dragging to highlight the area you DON'T want. Hit delete on the keyboard.

Keep doing this until your clip is about 30 seconds long.

Go to File >> Export as mp3 to save your ringtone. ** Note you can also use the "Export as WAV" if your phone uses that file format.

The first time you do this you will be prompted for the location of lame_enc.dll which is in the LAME folder you saved earlier. Once you point to it, choose the folder where you want your ringtone saved (I have a "Phone" folder under "My Documents" where I save all ringtones, themes and phone program files).

Once you have made the ringtone, then you just need to transfer it to your cellphone, using either Windows Mobile Device Center or bluetooth file transfer for example. How to select the song as a ringtone depends on your phone model. On the ATT Tilt, it's a matter of going to the song and holding the stylus down on it until a menu pops up. You will see a "Set as Ringtone" option.

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