making ringtones; volume issue--
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Posted on Apr 13, 2009 02:16 am
fortymile
Member Since: Jan 18, 2003
who is it here that does ringtones for a living? i'm researching the problem i'm having right now, but i'm mostly just uncovering people like me who are wondering why their homemade ringtones never seem to sound loud enough once in their phones.
just now i tried to take a look at the EQ curve of a sound that i got from online and whch IS loud as heck once loaded into the phone (it's just some crickets, so lots of high freqs). i made a note of where the main freqs were in that sound, then went back to the sound i'm working on and set the EQ curve basically the same way. main body of the cricket sound was between 2k and 6.5k. what i'm trying to do here is a freight train horn--a close-by train, maybe two blocks away, but with some valley echoes for a touch of distance too. i'm making it for someone who really wants one for personal reasons (i'd never use one, but i do like the sound of trains). anyway, there are other sounds in there too, some track sounds. you lose a lot when you cut off the lows, but it still sounds fine.
anyway, i boosted the fundamental area of the spectrum and rolled off the bass so that the bass is not really doing anything. when i played the result back in my sequencer, i didn't have to adjust the main volume slider: the overall volume was the same. it's hot and loud, but in the phone it's quieter, useless as an alarm and possibly useless as a ringtone.
i originally used a limiter on the whole track. a preset of some kind. the wav file 'looks' loud. tall, high spikes. looks maxed out. and my meter is hugging the red. only thing i can think to do is to try compressing just that midrange now, but i don't think it will do much.
for a while i thought the phone was set to limit imported sounds, because this is verizon, a truly terrible company that i hate. they cripple phones, damage proprietary menu systems by using their own inferior ones, i could go on and on. however, one time i did succeed in making a very loud ringtone, on my previous phone. that time, i made a sound recording by holding the thing directly up to a speaker as i played an mp3 fragment. so it's possible.
i don't know what's going on. someone here probably does. how would you think about this problem? what in the world could be happening?
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Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Apr 13, 2009 06:21 pm Well, Flame is the ringtone guy.
What converter are you using to make and upload the ringtone?
I use either the applet in Sonar or Tone This 2. Tone this originally had an issue like that but is fine now in version 2.
You have problems with Verizon? I've been with them since 2 companies before they were Versizon and have never had any issues at all. Not with menu's or sounds or anything. I get a pretty good deal as I have a load of phones with them and have had for years. They are the only Cell company that will guarantee Tuna's phone to work all around the globe. No other company will do that.
Apr 13, 2009 06:59 pm ah yes, flame! i haven't seen him here in a long time, and for some reason i could only remember his actual name, not his screen name.
i'm not using a converter. i was using cubase. my preference is for mp3 ringtones, i suppose. though if need be, i'll do whatever to make them louder, and if that means converting to some other format then ok. i just couldn't see a reason to bother. possibly i'm ill-informed in that area. all i know is that you can use mp3s as ringtones, so i do. they're too quiet, though.
it doesn't matter how much i max out the sound. before bed last night, the wav looked like a brick wall, but in the phone it was the same volume. the stock ringtones are fine and loud.
i saved the mp3 ringer in stereo, in mono, and at different bit rates. i've lopped it down to 10 seconds and at times have used small file sizes (such as with low bitrate mono). nothing works. i can't understand it. i've got some nature mp3s here that are loud enough once in the phone. like i said, i matched the eq curve for the train file with that of the cricket chorus sound i have, but nothing changed. it's a diesel horn and contains some train track clicking too. maybe i'm thinking about it wrong. since there's train track clicking in there too, maybe that's what i'm seeing between 2 and 6 khz. maybe the fundamental of the diesel horn is lower. still, it's got to be in the range the phone speaker can handle. my eq curve should have allowed for some boost around there too.
what do you convert to, noize? is that program you mentioned freeware?
i don't like verizon because i don't like a company that locks features out of its phones--features the phones natively have. i also hate that they really try to get you to pay to send photos to yourself. as i've said before, it's as if you had a verizon fridge phone. every time you go get a beer, you pay them 25 cents. they're corrupt, and they milk you dime by dime. they only thing they have going for them is their network IMO. i think it's the most heartless company i've ever seen.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Apr 13, 2009 09:22 pm What features are locked on your phone? I don't think I've ever seen any features locked out of any of the phones we have here.
And paying for pcitures?????
We can all send pix anywhere we want to anyone we want without any hassle. If I want to shoot a pic to 50 friggin people including myself it doesn't cost a dime.
Let me know about the feature thing and I'll ask my bud up here. He is the regional for VZ and is the one that hooked Tuna up with the BlackBerry and such.
But ya, ToneThis is freeware. It does a lot of stuff the others don't.
www.tonethis.com/
Its what I use if not making them direct in Sonar like I said.
But Tone This does do the mp3 thing as well.
Apr 13, 2009 09:47 pm noize, you pay for unlimited pix messaging then. for the rest of us, it costs 25 cents a pop. either way, you end up paying for something. yet phones are capable of bluetoothing pic files directly to a pc, or transferring them via USB cable. people had to use an open-source third-party hacking program to access their phone's files for a long time on vz. now some of the phones make it possible to do what has always actually been possible: reach into the phone and *get your pictures*, which are entirely yours, and not having to send them through the network at all. my last phone, this was not possible. and it was a good phone. it went on for years. casual users had no idea that there was or even could be another way.
similar things with ringtones, although both these things might finally be changing. for years, though, they didn't do anything about it. they crippled phones so that people would have to pay them for very basic functions. most people didn't know there was another way. phones are computers, and there's no way in hell vz owns the camera that the the manufacturers built in--at least not without going through some tangled and logically invalid legal argument.
thanks for tonethis! i'll give that a try tomorrow
Apr 14, 2009 12:28 am p.s. noize, tonethis doesn't really do anything. all it has are options for fade in and fade out, select the portion of the file you want to use, and a simple volume control. then it sends the finished tone to your phone.
you can do all of this with your regular audio software and an email account.
it doesn't convert to a format that makes the phone play the tone at a higher volume or anything like that
Apr 14, 2009 07:31 am it also installed a toolbar that persists after uninstall. there were about 8 different additional programs and services that were offered upon install; ii clicked 'decline' for all of them. but i had a bad, tricky feeling. normally i stop installing things when i get that feeling.
now that tonethis is removed, the toolbar remains.
gah help noize--how to get rid of the toolbar or any other secret free riders here?
Apr 14, 2009 07:42 am I emailed flame a link to this thread.
As I see it, I think the big volume issue with phones is their limited dynamic range...without any low end, depending on the song, it can be left virtually silent.
I tried making "twilight zone" from golden earring, sounded awesome on the DAW, but on the phone is totally worthless due to having no low end at all...more mid and high songs sound decent.
My bigger problem is volume differences from tone to tone...my wifes is loud, Noize2u's tone is quieter so I don't always hear it...
Apr 14, 2009 09:22 am Quote:
My bigger problem is volume differences from tone to tone...my wifes is loud, Noize2u's tone is quieter so I don't always hear it..
Most guys would prefer that the other way around! :-)
Apr 14, 2009 06:40 pm thanks for emailing flame, db. i'll be curious to hear what he knows.
cutting off the low end does suck, but it's what you have to do and i can live with it. just need to understand why i can't make what's left over any louder. it's got to have something to do with the phone or filetype. i can't think of anything else.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Apr 14, 2009 08:23 pm Forty, I just updated it to the version you probably downloaded and it does a full install basically when you update. I got no tool bars or anything odd going on at all. And I did the same as you, simply decline installing them.
With the app I feed it a clip without doing any extra EQ or stuff and let it do its compression thing and send it to the phone. Seems to work fine for me. Otherwise like I said, I use the applet in Sonar and then just drag it to the phone.
Apr 14, 2009 10:59 pm i got the toolbar off successfully. it's a firefox add-on and was removable in the tools menu.
but yeah it doesn't increase volume for me so i uninstalled, but thank you.
gotta hear from flame; maybe there's a real technical issue that must be solved. a ringtone designer should know what it is
Apr 16, 2009 04:58 am oh flame. share your knowledge.
