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Originally Posted by Phone Master What are polyphonic ringtones? What makes a ringtone polyphonic? What IS polyphonic? Are my MP3 ringtones polyphonic? |
The term
polyphonic is misused so much that it now seems that multiple uses are correct.
Merriam-Webster defines polyphony as "a style of musical composition employing two or more simultaneous but relatively independent melodic lines."
Wikipeda defines polyphony as "a musical texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice (monophony) or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords (homophony)."
A second meaning was added to the term polyphony with the introduction of music synthesizers. Early synthesizers were could only sound one note at a time. More modern music synthesizers are able to play multiple musical notes concurrently. Those synthesizers are referred to as "polyphonic."
This is a slightly different meaning for the old term, and created a bit of confusion.
The semantic situation became a bit more silly with the introduction of mobile phone ringtones.
In the world of mobile phone ringtones, a "polyphonic ringtone" is a ringtone in a file format which supports multiple concurrent notes
and where the notes are generated on the phone itself.
A ringtone with just one note at a time which is generated on the phone is a "monophonic ringtone."
The notes in MP3's ringtones are not generated on the mobile phones, they are digitally sampled recordings which the phone merely plays back.
Most polyphonic ringtones are stored in MIDI format (MIDI, MIDI 0, or SP-MIDI). Sagem 2.1 and Qualcomm CMX versions 1 and 2 also support polyphonic ringtones.
Personally, I am extra happy with MP3 ringtones.
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