MP3s Masquerading As WAVs Suitable for Ringtones

A while back, I decided to switch back to TMobile from Sprint/Nextel and get Shelly and I back on the same plan. Part of it was that it's become clear over the last year or so that TMobile's service has gotten much better in our area. Still more if it has to do with the lopsided usage that has one of us (the royal "us") paying for extra minutes while the other doesn't use theirs, making it a much better prospect to be on a shared plan. Then there's the fact that Shelly's phone died. Lastly, I'd gotten accustomed to the ability to buy unlocked GSM phones instead of selling my soul and years of cellular loyalty for $150 off of a phone and Sprint/Nextel isn't GSM compatible.

So, about 6 weeks ago, we decided to do a bit of a telephonic shuffle. We added my number to Shelly's plan as a "new" line. This came with a basic "free" phone. We pulled the SIM card out of her dead one and put it into this new one and her dead phone problem was solved. We put my new SIM card into an old Sony Z600 that I had in the electronics-I-can't-bring-myself-to-throw-out box. It isn't a bad phone, but there is a reason why it was in the box: the hinge was sloppy and the battery life kind of sucks.

So, I found myself a cheap unlocked phone that might meet my actual needs (ignoring technolust). There was a decent refurbished smartphone for just over $75. When I looked back over the last 2 years of actual phone usage, my actual needs matched up pretty well.

1. Outlook sync. I have all of my contacts, calendar and tasks in Outlook and this puts those things together in my phone without a PDA, which experience has shown to be not terribly well used in my life.
2. Standard USB-mini connector for power and sync. Any one of the dozens of basic USB cables can be used to charge this thing. My phones ALWAYS go dead when I'm somewhere that I don't have a charger handy. I'm rarely somewhere where there's not a USB cable and a PC lying around.
3. Automatic profile switching based on calendar. If there's a meeting scheduled, the phone goes on silent mode automatically.
4. WAV ringtones. I hate having music as a ringtone. I usually get something that sounds like an old AT&T phone or something else that's more subtle than obnoxious music. Having WAV or MP3 ringtones is a way to get exactly the right sounds to let me know the phone is ringing, while being subtle enough to suit my sensibilities.

It's the last bit that led me to my problem on Friday. I went looking for WAV sound effects, hoping to find something that I'd be OK with having go off in a room.

I dug around a bit and found one of someone just clearing their throat. I thought that might work for me and figured it'd be a good test of how to set these up. It was then that I discovered a nasty little secret that all of our wonderful It Just Works™ software has been hiding.

See, when I put the WAV on the phone, it just plain didn't work. I figured it might be something like being at the wrong sample rate or something, so I looked at the properties of the file. It was there that I discovered that this file that the site (which was WAV only sound effects) wasn't actually a WAV, but an MPEG Layer 3. It was a stinking MP3 file, renamed to a .wav. A quick trip through Audacity and I had a *real* WAV that, sure enough, actually worked on the phone.

So, I wondered, how many other files on this site were labeled as WAV incorrectly. The answer? All of them. I tried a couple of dozen and all of them were actually MP3 files that had been renamed as WAV. I suspect that the person running the site doesn't even know it (which is part of why I'm not linking to the site). That's because all of the software we use for listening to audio files handles both kinds and silently cleans up a mess like this when we send it the file.

This is one of the reasons I prefer working a little lower with my tools than at that shiny, happy, user friendly layer. At least I can see what's going wrong when I don't get an expected result. That's why, even when I use a Mac, I'm not drooling over slick, simple applications that Just Work™. That's because, while they do work most of the time, when they fail (and EVERY piece of software I've ever used on every platform has something go wrong eventually), fixing them can be next to impossible because it's a sealed black box.

At any rate, I'm just going to run any file I want to use as a ringtone through Audacity from now on and sidestep the problem. And, that phone clearing its throat is mine. Just let it go to voicemail.