In my previous tutorial I covered how to create ringtones using a Mac. Today I’ll cover creating ringtones using a PC and only free applications such as audacity. Download and install audacity and iTunes on your PC prior to doing this. I’m also using Vista but the same or similar screens exist for XP.

1. Open the piece of music or sound that you want to be your ring tone in Audacity and edit it down to under 40 seconds.

2. Go to File>Export and export the song as MP3. Audacity does not have the ability to export to AAC.

3. Give the file a unique name and save as .MP3

4. Once you have saved it you’ll next need to open the file in iTunes. Right click on the file and choose Open With>iTunes

5. Now that it is in iTunes you can convert it to iTunes native mp4 or AAC. Right click the file and choose Convert Selection to AAC

6. Now we need to rename this file to a ringtone format so browse to your iTunes music folder - in most cases its your default windows music folder.

7. By default windows Vista does not show file extensions. You’ll need to turn this off. Go to Tools>Folder Options. Un-check Hide extensions for known file types.

8. Once you have done this you should be able to change the file name to .m4r

9. Choose Yes that you are aware your computer will explode if you change the file extension.

10. Right click on the file and choose to open with> and choose iTunes.

11. Once you open it up in iTunes you should see it is now in its ringtone category. And you’re good.

Update: some of you have commented that you can’t move the song over to the iPod after it is created. You get a message like “unable to find file” others have had no problems.

First off when you get a message like that it is telling you something important. Try finding the location of where the file is supposed to be. Reimport it. Also you might verify that you renamed the file correctly by opening a command prompt and look at it in dos.