Quick tip. New mobile phones nowadays support playing MP3 files and let you use the MP3 files as your ring tone or message tone. Sometimes, we don't want to use the entire part of a MP3 file as our ring tone. In this post I will show you how to create a MP3 file from certain part of a MP3 file. We will use Audacity, a free and open source sound editing software.

1. First of all, we need to download and install Audacity. In this post, I will use the latest Audacity 1.3.7 beta.

2. Next, download and install the LAME MP3 encoder to allow Audacity to export audio file to MP3 format.

3. Run Audacity. If you've installed the LAME MP3 encoder plugin for Audacity, your Audacity should be able to encode to MP3 files. To check if the LAME MP3 encoder is enabled in Audacity, Go to 'Edit' > 'Preferences' (1). Click 'Import/Export' (2). The version of LAME encoder should be showed (3). If not, you need to select the lame_enc.dll file manually.

4. Open the audio file with Audacity that you wish to be used as ring tone. Select the part that you want to use as the ring tone. Click and drag the part that you want to select. To make things easier, you can zoom in the audio track (4). You can also insert labels (5) on the audio track to mark certain positions of the audio file ('Tracks' > 'Add Label At Selection' or 'Add Label At Playback Position').

5. After you've made the selection, go to 'Edit' > 'Copy' to copy your selection. Next, create a new project ('File' > 'New') and paste your selection into the new project ('Edit' > 'Paste'). You can add some effect if you want, for example 'Fade In' or 'Fade Out' at the start and at the end of the audio.

6. After you've finished editing the audio, we will export the audio file to MP3 format. Go to 'File' > 'Export'. You can enter the metadata about the audio file. Click 'OK' (6). Select 'MP3 Files' (7) as the file type. You can click 'Options' (8) to change the bit rate and channel settings. I recommend you use 'Constant' for bit rate mode and 128 kbps for quality. Give your ring tone a file name and click 'Save' (9) to save the file.

7. Next, transfer the ring tone file to your mobile phone.

8. For in depth tutorial to create ring tone using Audacity, you can take a look at Audacity Wiki.

Audacity is free and open source software.

[Download: Audacity] [Download: LAME MP3 encoder for Audacity]