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.comOr 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.comGet 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.ukNokia 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