HOWTO: Create custom ringtones for Cisco IP Phones

If you are not satisfied with prebuilt ringtones in your Cisco IP Phone, then you can quite easily get your favorite song as your ringtone. Here is the procedure how to create your own ringtone:

1. Get your favorite song as a mp3 or a wav file.
Maybe Google with help you to find it :)

2. Convert it into a RAW PCM file with some specified requirements.
You can use any kind of sound editing software in which you can create a RAW PCM file.
I would recommend using SOX. Maybe the easiest way to get SOX working is to get a Linux machine with SOX (pre)installed (if you don’t want to install it on your computer, you can download it as a vmware appliance). Then you can use the following command to convert an input file (input.mp3) to a RAW PCM file (ringtone.raw):

sox input.mp3 -t raw -r 8000 -U -b -c 1 ringtone.raw resample –ql

This command will create your ringtone file. Unfortunately the max size of a ringtone file can be only 16080B. In most situations, sox will create a bigger file so you will need to cut some part from it in order to create a file with a size of 16080B. To do this, you can use “dd”:

dd if=rigntone-too_big.raw of=ringtone-size_ok.raw bs=1005 count=16

This command cuts just the first 16*1005 (16080) bytes from the input file and writes them to the output file. If you want to drop some bytes from the beginning of the input file, you can use a command similar to this:

dd if=rigntone-too_big.raw of=ringtone-size_ok.raw bs=1005 count=16 skip=32

This command will ignore the first 32*1005 bytes from the input file while writing the remaining 16*1005 (16080) bytes to the output file.

3. Upload the raw pcm file to the tftp server of your Communications Manager.
If you are using the “big” CCM in version 4.x, then you have to upload your new ringtone file to C:\Program Files\Cisco\TFTPPath.
If you are using CCM Express, then you have to put your new ringtone file to the flash and then publish it via tftp: tftp-server flash:myRingtone.raw

4. Edit the RINGLIST.XML/DAT file and publish the new ringtone to your IP Phones.
If you are using the “big” CCM in version 4.x, then you have to edit the C:\Program Files\Cisco\TFTPPath\RINGLIST.XML file and add a reference to your new ringtone like this:

<CiscoIPPhoneRingList>
...
<Ring><DisplayName>My Tone</DisplayName><FileName>myRingtone.raw</FileName></Ring>
...
</CiscoIPPhoneRingList>

After saving this file, and uploading the ringtone you may need to restart the tftp server (net stop "Cisco Tftp", net start "Cisco Tftp"), because the tftp server is caching files and it will send the previous cached version of the RINGLIST.XML or the ringtone file.
If you are using the CCM Express, then afaik you can use the same structure of RINGLIST.XML file, or you can use a simple RINGLIST.DAT file with a structure like this:

CTU24raw CTU24raw.raw
My Tone myRingtone.raw

You will need to store this RINGLIST.DAT or .XML on the flash and also publish it via tftp: tftp-server flash:RINGLIST.DAT

And that's all, now just reboot your IP Phone and select from the Settings->RingType your new ringtone and enjoy it :)
If you create some interesting ringtone you can post it here so others can use it too :-D