Tutorial: How to make a Silent Ringtone

cc photo by Sara Petagna

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Problem

I never answer calls from a number that I don’t know. If it’s important they’ll leave a message. I have this one caller that calls me everyday and never leaves a message. I’m thinking it’s an automated call. How do I prevent the caller from interrupting me on a daily basis?

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A Solution

As I mentioned before, I have a Nokia N85 mobile phone. Either there isn’t a built in way to block calls from certain numbers, or I’m blind and just can’t find this feature. In any case, here’s a quick and dirty workaround.

I can easily assign ringtones for certain numbers. Therefore, a silent ringtone would prevent the unwanted call from bothering me.

Here’s the 1 second silent ringtone I created which is available to download from archive.org…

http://www.archive.org/download/SilentRingtone/silence.mp3

Like everything I create, the silent ringtone has been set free from any copyrights using the CC0 waiver.

If you don’t want to use the silent ringtone I created, here’s how to create it yourself using a Mac.

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Overview

1. Install Audacity
2. Install LAME MP3 Encoder
3. Create Silence
4. Export Silent Audio File

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1. Install Audacity

Audacity is an open source audio editing application. You can download it here…
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/beta_mac

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2. Install LAME MP3 Encoder

LAME MP3 Encoder lets us create mp3 files. You can download it here…
http://lame.buanzo.com.ar/

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3. Create Silence

• In your Applications folder, open up Audacity.
• In Audacity’s menu, go to “Generate” > “Silence…”
• In the “Silence Generator” window, enter “000,001 seconds” and click “OK”

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4. Export Silent Audio File

• In Audacity’s menu, go to “File” > “Export…”
• In the “Edit Metadata” window, click “OK”
• In the “Save As:” field, enter “silence.mp3”
• Choose a folder to save it in.
• In the “Format:” field, choose “MP3 Files” and click “Options…”
• For “Bit Rate Mode:”, choose “Constant”
• For “Quality”, choose “8 kbps”
• For “Channel Mode”, choose “Joint Stereo” and click “OK”
• Click “Save”
• An “Invalid sample rate” message should appear.
• For “Sample Rates”, choose “8000” and click “OK”.

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You should now have a silent mp3 that you can use as a ringtone for phones that support truetones.

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