Heavy Metal Ringtones
- Ringtones or ring tone is the sound made by a
cell phones to indicate an incoming call. The term however, is most often used to refer to the customizable sounds available on mobile phones. This facility was originally provided so that people would be able to determine when their phone was ringing when in the company of other
mobile phone owners.
A cell-phone only rings when a special ringing signal is sent to it. For regular telephones, the ringing signal is a 90-volt, 20-hertz, AC wave generated by the switch to which
the telephone is connected. For mobile phones, the ringing signal is a specific, radio-frequency signal.
The first commercial mobile ring tones were created and delivered in Finland in 1998 when a Finnish mobile operator Radiolinja (today Elisa) started their downloadable
mobile ring tone service called Harmonium invented by Vesa-Matti Paananen. The Harmonium contained both tools for general public to create monophonic ring tones and a mechanism
to deliver them over-the-air (OTA) via SMS to a mobile handset and to bill customer on their phone bill. The service concept spread quickly in Europe and
Asia and developed to be a multi billion industry globally. A ring tone service was one of the very first successful m-commerce services and contained also social media aspects like
composing, sharing and rating ring tones. The Harmonium also created quickly a need for high quality professional ring tones and commercial ring tone libraries.
The rise of video games has also contributed to the popularity of ring tones. On August 5, 2006, the BBC reported that free ringtones was the eighth most likely
search term to return links to malware.
Features
Whereas older telephones simply used a pair of bells for the ringer, modern ring tones have become extremely diverse, leading to phone personalization and customization.
Newer mobile phones allow the users to associate different ring tones for different phone book entries. Taking advantage of these features, a new Ringtones Maker trend
has emerged. For example, websites like Phone Sherpa and Ringtones Soup let users make ringtones from the music they already own (MP3, CD etc.) and upload directly
to their mobile phone with no limit on the number of songs uploaded. In addition to the cost benefits, a key feature is the music editor that lets the user easily pick the part of the song they wish to set as a ringtones. Such services automatically
detect the phone settings to ensure the best file type and format. There are however providers who have already edited and trimmed the song for you.
Others also allow users to create their own music tones, either with a melody composer or a sample/loop arranger (such as the Music DJ in many Sony Ericsson phones). However,
these use native formats only available to one particular phone model or brand. Although other formats, such as MIDI or MP3, are often supported; they must be downloaded
to the phone before they can be used as a normal ring tone. Commercial ring tones take advantage of this functionality, which has led to the success of the mobile
music industry. Southern rapper Cha millionaire was the first to have a ring tone go 3x platinum for the hit single Riding. He now has his own category on certain
phones.
The latest innovation is the sing tone, a type of karaoke ring tone where a user’s voice recording is adjusted to be both in time and in tune then mixed with a backing
track to make a user-created ring tone. An alternative to a ring tone for mobile phones is a vibrating alert. It may be useful:
In noisy environments
In places where ring tone noise would be disturbing
For the hearing impaired
Polyphonic ringtones
A polyphonic ringtones is a ringtones that makes use of polyphony. 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.
Later, it became possible to use digital audio recordings as ringtones. The recordings might be of music, speech, or other sounds. Mainstream music recordings used as
ringtones are sometimes called real tones or true tones. Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones. A recent innovation is
the sing tone, whereby the user’s voice is recorded to a popular track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound in key. This can then be downloaded as a ringtones
or sent to another user’s mobile phone.