m4r/m4a/ect to caf/aiff

Hey! I'm new. New to everything Mac in fact.

Here's my issue.

I have jailbroken my iPhone in order to get custom SMS tones (the mario coin sound to be exact). I wasn't planning on jailbreaking it but I've discovered its the only way. So that went surprisingly easy for me. My tricky bit is I have a wav/mp3/m4r version of the sound I want to use and I can't figure out how to get it to change to aiff/caf. I've tied just changing the extension name but my iPhone doesn't seem to like that.

I've been scouring the internets for information about this and just about everything I've found says that I should import the song into iTunes making sure iTunes knows to change it to aiff. Too bad my iTunes doesn't want to do that. I use "add file to library" or just drag it into the library and iTunes doesn't do anything, the song doesn't appear, nothing. if I tell the file to open with iTunes it works but the file is not converted or it is and goes to m4r!

Does anyone know something that I can use that won't tell me to use itunes? I've spent about an hour searching and I'm so frustrated that I'm probably missing something. So... help!

iTunes: How to convert a song to a different file format

It basically says to go to iTunes Preferences -> General tab -> Import settings -> AIFF.

You can do right-click on song(s), then Convert, or just import.

Then you find it in the itunes library in explorer.

BUT they aren't necessarily the right AIFF format for your iphone. I'm looking that up now ...

caf to m4r (or m4a) / OR m4r to caf, etc

(I will use example.ext to explain the process)
.caf to m4r: (or caf to m4a)
change example.caf to example.aiff >drag example.aiff into itunes music section > convert example.aiff using the iTunes AAC encoder - in settings (this will change it to example.m4a) > Drag the newly created file from iTunes to the desktop > Change example.m4a to example.m4r > OR leave example.m4a if you need it as m4a > Finished

.m4r (or m4a) to .caf:
rename example.m4r to example.m4a (if already m4a, skip this step) > drag example.m4a into iTunes and convert it to aiff using the iTunes AIFF encoder - in settings (this will change it to example.aiff) > drag example.aiff to the desktop > rename example.aiff to example.caf > OR leave example.aiff if you need it as aiff > Finished

Tested and works both ways. Hope that helps.

If you have a wav or mp3 (or other format), convert it to .aiff using audacity audio editor and then follow the instructions above. If you want the .caf into mp3, wav, etc, follow the conversion to .aiff and then convert the .aiff to whatever format using audacity.