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Product: Cell Phone: Ringtone: Generator
303 acid ring tones   (+13)  [vote for, against]
Mobile phones with a 303-based sound generator onboard.

For those not in the know, the 303 refers to the Roland TB-303, a primitive synthesizer/sequencer, originally designed as a poor-person's replacement for a bass player, but which has since then become massively popular in techno/house/trance music because of the resonant squelching noises it can make when you tweak the knobs. Actual 303s sell for thousand dollars a piece; despite their cheap construction, there were only 10,000 or so made before Roland realised that it was a crap substitute for a bass player and canned it.

The 303 itself is a simple device; there is software (such as ReBirth) which emulates it accurately, and making a 303-like sound generator on a chip should be relatively easy. Given that a 303 contains a 16-step sequencer, it would be natural for repeating sounds, such as ring tones.

Which brings me to my idea: design a 303 on a chip, make it cheap, embed it in mobile phones (ideally those with a fluorescent/transparent/glittery appearance), and you have something more novel and cooler (at least for E-popping raver kids) than the usual beepy renditions of classical motifs/folk melodies. Allow the ring-tone editor to control resonant filters, envelopes and such as well as the notes, or put in a randomiser to allow each user to generate their own variant.
-- acb, Mar 28 2001

(?) Ringnow Polyphonic Ringtones http://www.ringnow.com
Or just get a SonyEricsson P800 and load a .wav recording of a 303 onto it. Not great base though, but great for monkey sounds. [elhena, Oct 04 2004]

(?) Oleg tsy http://www.qvga.com
Get nokia ringtones [alect, Oct 04 2004]

(?) Free nokia ringtones http://www.freenokia-ringtones.com
[alect, Oct 04 2004]

(?) Nokia ringtones http://www.ringtones-u.co.uk
Nokia ringtones and logos [alect, Oct 04 2004]

People do that anyway, to make sure that everybody knows how important they are, that they have to be in contact at every second...
-- StarChaser, Mar 28 2001


There are electrostatic speakers (hi-fi) and piezoelectric speakers (low-fi).

There are also magneto-plasma-dynamic speakers, which are a bit like what you describe, and are pretty neat, but aren't something I want in my pocket.
-- wiml, Apr 02 2001


Surely, the idea of a phone is to ring, not to play a tune :) That's what hifis etc are for !
-- modula, Apr 04 2001


great idea, but when is the time we can program the handy's ourselfs? acid tricky ha!
-- acidxtc, Sep 03 2001



random, halfbakery