Types of Ringtones

Monophonic

A Monophonic ringtone is a ringtone that can play only one type of musical tone at a time.

Polyphonic

A Polyphonic ringtone is a ringtone that can play several types of tones at a time (up to 72 in recent phones). The first polyphonic ringtones used sequenced recording methods such as MIDI. Such recordings specify what instrument should play a note at a given time, but the actual instrument sound is dependent upon the playback device.

Realtone

A Truetone is a Ring tone which has been encoded with a high fidelity format such MP3, AAC, or WMV format, and represents the latest evolution of the ringtone. It is often also referred to as a Mastertone, a Realtone or a Superphonic Ringtone. Real tones, which are often excerpts from pop songs, have become popular as ringtones. A recent innovation is the singtone, whereby the user’s voice is recorded to a popular track and then “tuned-up” automatically to sound in key. This can then be downloaded as a ringtone or sent to another user’s mobile phone.