Nokia AMR ringtone tutorial 1/3
The Nokia AMR ringtone format has evolved since the new multimedia driven phones have hit the market. AMR stands for “Adaptive Multi-Rate“. There are two versions of AMR ringtones. One is called AMR and the other is called AMR-WB, which stands for “Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband“. The wideband ringtones are of higher quality (16kHz as apposed to 8kHz).
All this jargon doesn’t really affect the end-user as long as you know which tools you should use to create your ringtone.
Frequency range
It’s important to note that mobile phones can generally only play a certain range of frequencies. Tunes with more bass will generally sound tinny and there are a few techniques which you can apply to get the most out of your ringtones. According to my research AMR-WB technology uses nine bit rates between 6.6 and 23.85 kbit/s at 16 kHz sampling rate. This means your audio files don’t really have to be of higher quality than 22kbit/s.
File size limitations
It’s important to note that not all phones can support a full realtone. From what I gathered the 33XX series phones can support up to 64kb files, allthough my recommendations would still be 30KB, purely because most phones switch to voicemail after the default +-20 seconds anyway. I’ll leave this up to personal choice based upon which handset you’ve got.
What you’ll need
There are a few applications and other accessories which you’ll need to get the tones to your phone. First of all, you’d need some kind of audio editing software. Apps that come to mind are Sound Forge, Wavelab and a multitude of cheaper offerings (just Google ‘wav editing software’). Now if you’re going to rip your favorite song from one of your CD’s, you’ll need some CD ripping software, which can also be Googled quite easily.
Next you’ll need some conversion software, of which Nokia Multimedia Converter is the best option. It’s freely available on the Nokia Developer site.
Then you’ll need a way to get the tones to your phone. The easiest is via the right PC link software for your phone and either a cable, infrared or bluetooth connection to your phone.
Go gather! I’m working on the next installment for next week. If you have any questions, I’ve opened a Nokia AMR thread in the ringtone forum for discussion…