Friday,Mar 17 2006, 07:57:41 AMRingtone

Ringtone

Are you sad enough to want to reproduce that distinctive CTU ringtone from the TV series '24' on your mobile phone?
Well, I am. So I worked out the RTTTL code needed to get it on my little Nokia 8210.
But that was just the start of the story. Ever since I posted the code here back in 2003, along with the reference samples I used in order to work it out, a lot of equally sad people have sent me versions of the ringtone in different formats.
ring tone
Monophonic
Early phones had the ability to play only monophonic ring tones, short tunes played with simple tones. These early phones also had the ability to have ring tones programmed into them using an internal ring tone composer. Various formats were developed to enable ring tones to be sent via SMS text, for example RTTTL encoding.
Polyphonic Polyphonic means that multiple notes can be played at the same time using instrument sounds such as guitar, drums, electronic piano, etc. Many phones are now able to play more complex polytones; up to 128 individual notes with different instruments are played simultaneously to give a more realistic musical sound.
Mobile phone handsets manufacturers have taken full advantage of new technologies to improve speakers in order to produce better sound quality.
Polyphonic ringtones are based upon midi sequences so can pool in the 100+ different midi sounds, many polyphonic capable phones are able to play standard midi files, others play sp-midi which is scalable polyphony and depending on the number of channels the phone can play the handset will render that many notes. On an old polyphonic capable phone may play 4 notes at once with the flashier new handsets being able to render 128 notes at once. Many phones support SMAF (.mmf) files which is based upon a sound format devised by Yamaha.
Music ring tones
A new version of ring tones, often called either music ring tones, voice tones, mastertones, realtones, singtones or true tones, now use actual pieces of music, along with all lyrics and the entire song backing music, including backing singers. They are usually contained in AAC, MP3, WMA, WAV, QCP, or AMR format that can be used as a ring tone on many Series 60, Symbian or smartphones. Many cell phone manufacturers are including voice ring tones on most of their newly released phones, including Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. The first real music ringtone was created by Richard Fortenberry and Brad Zutaut and was sent over the Sprint network. They were two of the founders of a company called Xingtone. It was from a song by the band Devo.
Ring tones, along with operator logos, have proven a popular method of personalising phones — a major industry has popped up to tailor to the needs of people to customize their phones, and newer phones include features to allow users to create their own tones. Many people enjoy their personalisation of the phones, but some find certain ring tones annoying in public
External links How Ringtones Work Birds learning to mimic mobile phone ringtones Ring tones and the music industry Sample ringtone - Loud vintage telephone ring
Telephony sig
So here they are, for all your hey-look-at-me-I'm-Jack-Bauer needs: Format Version Download Credit Comment RTTTL 1 CTU24.txt James Anderson Go here for RTTTL ringtone converter. WAV 1 CTU24.wav James Anderson MP3 1 CTU24.mp3 James Anderson MP3 2 CTU24B.mp3 Stuart Mackay MIDI 1 CTU24.mid Jon Hollström Get alternatives here and here (off-site). SMAF MA-2 1 CTU24.ma2.mmf Roman Weßling Go here for list of compatible handsets. SMAF MA-3 1 CTU24.ma3.mmf Robert Hunt Go here for list of compatible handsets. SMAF MA-3 2 CTU24B.ma3.mmf Robert Hunt Go here for list of compatible handsets. 3GPP AMR 1 CTU24.amr Matt Hancock RAW (Cisco IP phones) 1 CTU24.raw Logan Ingalls Go here for installation instructions. RAW (Cisco IP phones) 2 CTU.raw Bruce Cheng Go here for installation instructions. ADP (Blackberry handhelds) 1 CTU Phone.adp Adam Daley This one is hosted off-site. iMelody (Siemens DECT phones) 1 CTU24.imy Onur Hitay
If you need to use WAP download to install ringtones on your phone, you may find this WAP uploader service useful. (Thanks to Helena Hoppe for this.)
Note: Please do not email me with queries like this: "How do I get this ringtone on my Nokisson Sonyrola ZX81?" I will not reply to such queries. Don't take it personally! Believe me: I almost certainly know less about your mobile phone than you do. My best suggestion is that you do a search for the information you need with Google or Google Groups, using the make and model of your phone along with 'RTTTL' or 'WAV' or 'MP3' as keywords.

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