What is the maximum size a MP3 can be to use as a ringtone?

Question

My new phone has an MP3 player but I am very discouraged. Now that I finally have gotten songs loaded onto my phone it is telling me they are too large to use as ringtones! Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know how to deal with this? Thanks!

Answer 1

Make sure the birate rate is low!

96kbps is probably what you're looking for if you want a full minute or something like that.

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Yeah sure. Do note that I am not familiar with MP3's as ringtones. Honestly this was just an educated guess and I'm pretty sure that an MP3's birate rate has somethign to do with it.

Pretty much the birate rate of an MP3 is the quality of the file. Most downloaded songs on the internet are 128kbps (kilobytes per second). All that means is that every second 128 kilobytes are processed through your computer.

Still with me?

To give you some perspective. CD's are recorded at 192 - 320 kbps depending on the record label and studio.

For a simple ringtone, I would imagine you would have to lower the birate rate to the lowest possible level while still keeping in mind that you want to actualy hear the song in an alright quality. I suggested 96kbps because that's a low quality but it still keeps some of the nicer levels of the song.

Confused? You probably are, so I would just contact the customer service of your phone service and ask them how to handle ringtones and stuff like that.

Confused on what I said? Here's a link on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, that may explain what I told you in much greater detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3

Hope this helps. Oh, I'll edit my answer and put this message there for anyone else who is wondering.

Best of luck!

Answer 2

depending on the phone, they usually can hold up to 60 kilobytes. the lower the bitrate is the longer the mp3 can be but it will also make the sound quality bad.