Creating Ringtones for the iPhone 3G/3GS (11556 Workaround)

2010-04-03T12:31:00.012-04:00

I've run into issues in the past trying to create ringtones for my iPhone 3GS. Often you will get a warning telling you that you can only create ringtones from songs purchased from the iTunes store. People that use non-American iTunes stores may also see an error citing error number 11556 when attempting to create a ringtone. Many times when you think you've synced the ringtone, you discover that you can only listen to it as a song, and not assign it to a phone contact.

Below are the steps to create a proper ringtone for your iPhone using any song in your library.

You'll need a song in your iTunes library to use as a source. As an example, I will extract the opening riff to Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. Give your song a listen and make note of the start and end time of the segment you want to use as your ringtone. When listening to Kashmir, I note that the riff starts immediately, and ends about 18.5 seconds into the song.

Right click the song, and select "Get Info"

Go to the "Options" tab. Check the box to the left of "Start Time:" and "Stop Time:". Since the riff begins right away, we'll leave the start time at 0:00. The riff ends 18.5 seconds into the song, so for the stop time, we'll specify 0:18.500. Enter into these two fields the start and end times for the segment you want to extract.

Click OK.

Keep in mind a ringtone must not be longer than 40 seconds in length.

Now right click the song, and select "Create AAC Version". (If you do not see this option, then go to your iTunes preferences and go to the "General" tab. Click on the "Import Settings" button and select "AAC Encoder" from the "Import Using:" drop down. Click "OK" twice to return to the main iTunes screen to try again.)

The newly created file should be the segment of the song you want to use as your ringtone. For my ringtone, it appears as a 19 second long track containing the opening riff from Kashmir. Listen to the file in its entirety to make sure you were accurate when setting the start and end times. If you got too much of the song or if your track ends too early, delete the new track, readjust the start and end times of the original, and create a new AAC version.

Once you're happy with the track, drag it from your iTunes library onto your desktop. You will see a file with a .m4a extension. Rename this to a .m4r extension

Go to iTunes and delete the file you just dragged onto the desktop. If you don't do this, we cannot properly re-add the new m4r file back into iTunes. Once deleted, double click the m4r file found on your desktop. It will be added to iTunes as a ringtone and can be found in the Ringtones section of the library

Plug in your iPhone and click on it in iTunes. Go to the Ringtones tab. You should see your song listed there

And finally, right click your original song and click "Get Info." Uncheck the "Start Time:" and "Stop Time:" boxes so that it plays in full when you listen to it through iTunes or on your iPhone.

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Creating Ringtones for the iPhone 3G/3GS (11556 Workaround)