Making AIM Sound Buddy Icons

Note: If you came here looking for already made sound buddy icons or just regular AIM buddy icons, visit our AIM Buddy Icons page instead.

Note: These sound AIM buddy icons may no longer work in the newer versions of AIM. This is unconfirmed.

Welcome to a tutorial about making your own sound AIM buddy icons. The process is fairly simple, and anyone can do it with the right software and for free too. So, let's begin.

Requirements

• Existing sound file (MP3 or WAV)

• Sound editing software (don't worry, we have a free one you can use)

• Sound Recorder on Windows
  *Note: If you are using a different operating system, you will need some other piece of software that can save in the following formats listed below under Technical Details

Recommended

• AIM (to actually use your sound buddy icons)

Technical Details

If you're already experienced with sound creation and compression, here are the details of the files. If you have no clue, just skip to the next section.

• For sound files 1-3 seconds long: WAV File; Format: MPEG Layer-3; 16 kbit/sec; 11,025 Hz; 1 channel (mono)

• For sound files 3-6 seconds long: WAV File; Format: MPEG Layer-3, 8 kbit/sec; 11,025 Hz; 1 channel (mono)

For Beginners

Yeah, so none of that above made any sense. No problem - that's what this tutorial is here for. First, we'll have to get a sound editing program to trim sound files to a correct length to fit under 7 KB (kilobytes) of data. There are many commercial and freeware solutions available, and it's really your own personal preference. I personally use SoundForge, a commercial software package, but chances are that you probably won't find a need to buy software just to do simple edits to sound files. For the sake of this tutorial, we'll be using Audacitiy, a well rounded freeware open source sound editing application with advanced plug-in functionality for VST, LADSPA, and Nyquist formats. Visit the website, and download a copy of it for your operating system.

Introduction

After you've installed Audacity and run an instance of it, go to File> Open, and select an existing sound file or music file you want to convert to a sound AIM buddy icon. After the sound file is opened, you should see a visual display of it. Now, for the fun part. Because AIM sound buddy icons have to be 7 KB or less, this gives you little room to fit mountains of music into one buddy icon. On average, the longest you can fit into a icon is 6 seconds, and at 6 seconds, it's not very high quality. In the format we're saving it in, there are two major compression levels that have different quality levels.

How Long Should It Be?

It's comparison time! Hear the higher quality version and the lower quality version. The higher quality version (which we will refer to as version 1) is actually larger than 7 KB, and is only provided as a example. The lower quality version (version 2) IS under 7 KB and will work fine as a sound buddy icon. Nonetheless, version 2 sounds crappy (well, crappier than the higher one).

If you want your buddy icon to be 1-3 seconds, it will be like version 1. If you want your buddy icon to be 3-6 seconds, it will be crappy like version 2. Ok, now I hope I didn't confuse you there.

Trimming

Well, obviously you have to trim the song to fit now. Select the parts you don't want (with the "I" tool) and delete them (Figure 1.0). Do CTRL-A (or select all) and check the bottom to see how long it is (Figure 1.1). Under all circumstances, it has to be 6 seconds or less.

Effects

If you saw Figure 1.0, you might have noticed that the clip I had remaining was more like 15 seconds. Audacity has many inbuilt effects, and one of them is Change Speed (Figure 1.2). In my project, I used it to speed up the song to reduce its length. Of course, I sort of went to the extreme on mine, but only because it sounded nice after I did it. Usually, it probably won't come out well if sped up too much, and only a slight increase in speed to reduce length will work. Increasing speed to decrease length is always a good trick.

Now, remember to check your final length to make sure it's 6 seconds or shorter.

Exporting & Compression

Go to File > Export as WAV and save it to somewhere you will remember. Find Sound Recorder on your Windows system (it should be hanging around in Start Menu > Programs (All Programs) > Accessories. Use it and open the file you exported from Audacity. We'll be using Sound Recorder to compress the WAV, since Audacitiy doesn't do it (at the time of the writing of this article, or at least not to my knowledge).

Go to File > Save As and in the Save As dialog, find the Change button for Format (Figure 1.3). Now, you should see a Sound Selection dialog (or similar). In the Format dropdown, select MPEG Layer-3 and after the Attributes drop down has been populated, scroll down to 16 kBit/s, 11, 025 Hz, Mono (Figure 1.4). Remember the little How Long Should It Be section before? Well, here's where you decide quality. Choose the right one according to below.

• For sound files 1-3 seconds long: 16 kBit/s, 11,025 Hz, Mono
• For sound files 3-6 seconds long: 8 kBit/s, 11,025 Hz, Mono

Verify the Result

Now, save the changes and then save the file. Right click the file, and click Properties. Check the Size field and find the number of bytes (Figure 1.5). Make sure it is 7168 bytes or less, or AIM will reject it. If it is, you're done! If it's larger, then you have to change the compression method (16 kBit/s or 8 kBit/s), reduce the length of the sound file, or both.

Hear the final result!

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