Changing the bit-rate on sound files

[Neroon]

I have a budddy here at work who'd like to create a few ringtones from some existing sound files. The problem is they are somewhat hefty in size. One obvious idea is to lower the bit-rate. Not having done anything like that myself, I have done a little research. It seems it can be done with iTunes for one. Are there any other packages that can accomplish this?

 

[Iasius]

I generally use Audacity for these purposes.

 

[JustAFriend]

Voxengo's r8brain.
It's FREE and will even do batch processing on entire folders:

http://www.voxengo.com/product/r8brain/

 

[anais]

Matlab

 

[backstept]

I generally use Audacity for these purposes.

seconded

it's open source, and the only thing I use for sound editing

 

[Neroon]

I've heard good things about it, from a variety of sources.

 

[CaptainStoner]

I've been using Cakewalk because it was the only thing I could find sub many hundreds of $$$ that recorded @ 24-bit at the time. Appears to be a similar program but I just downloaded their beta version. It's all a matter of interface to me, will definetly give Audacity a spin ~

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I also use Audacity, but remember most phones don't handle MP3s. A lot of them only take custom, proprietary sound files that are very low quality. There are plenty of converters available for them, though.