One of the most common complaints about the iPhone is how quiet the ringer is. Most, including myself, have blamed this on iPhone's tiny speakers. As it turns out, the culprit is the audio itself and not the speaker it plays on. Granted, tiny speakers aren't good for playing loud, low-frequency audio, but that's not the point. It's always a good idea to use loud, high-frequency audio as a ringtone. Where do you find such an amazing piece of audio? Amazingly enough, most of don't even realize that we have it living on our Macs this very moment.
I discovered this when I went looking for a ringtone that was a simple "ring". No marimbas, no crickets. Just a plain old ring. During my quest, I came across a message board that referred to GarageBand possessing just what I was looking for. After searching through the app, I came across exactly what I wanted - a simple "ring".
The sound, called "Cell Phone Ringing, comes courtesy of GarageBand's royalty-free audio loops. The file is located fairly deep within a myriad hierarchies at:
/Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/Work - Home/Cell Phone Ringing.aif
The iPhone doesn't like raw AIF audio, so the next step is to convert that sound into something it does play. Both AACs and MP3s should work fine, but I like using AAC. iTunes is my application of choice for this task. Add the file to your library, right (or control) click the filel and select "Convert Selection to AAC". If you don't see this option, you need to select "AAC Encoder" from Preferences>Advanced>Importing. Once you have your AAC file, upload it to the /Library/Ringtones folder on your iPhone using iFuntastic (or another method).
Now, I hadn't set out to find a magically easy to hear ringtone, but that's exactly what this file turned out to be. You wouldn't believe how well you can hear it.
If you've been struggling to hear your iPhone ring, give this one a try. You'll be pleasantly surprised.
