Mobile Ringtones

The ringtones original and basic function was simply to inform the mobile user of the incoming call, in the beginning cell phones rings are all sounded alike. When one cell phone rang, everyone reached for their pockets. Then there were distinct cell phone rings.

At first these tinny sounding digital tunes were only slightly distinguishable and equally annoying but as technology improved so did the sophistication of the content.

Soon ringtones mushroomed into a $3 billion industry turning cell phones across the globe into a lucrative business for the distribution of popular music.

Newer mobile phones allow the users to associate different ring tones for different phone book entries. Taking advantage of these features, a new Ringtone Maker trend has emerged. Now people prefer to keep ring tones seperate for different names, so that they know without looking at the number who is calling,

Types of Ringtones

Monophonic

A Monophonic ringtone is a ringtone that can play only one type of musical tone at a time.

Polyphonic

A Polyphonic ring tone is a ring tone that can play several types of tones at a time (up to 72 in recent phones). The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback device.

Realtone

A True tone is a Ringtone which has been encoded with a high fidelity format such MP3, AAC, or WMV format, and represents the latest evolution of the ringtone. It is often also referred to as a Mastertone or Realtone. Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones.

A recent innovation is the singtone, whereby the users voice is recorded to a popular track and then tuned-up automatically to sound in key. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another users mobile phone.

Covertones

These are exciting new formats for ringtones. They are clips with real vocals of well known songs sung by the known artists.