Violin Recording in Garage Band 3 (or another program?)
In the past I had been using an Alienware 51m with a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PCMCIA card where I was connecting the cable to the optical in port. Since I had only one line in to the card I used a Y cable to connect to the pre-amp to the sound card. Then I had the mic set up on a stand somewhat near the area I would be playing. When I had been recording I had been just using Creative Mediasource.
My main concern in finding a way to duplicate this setup on my Mac is two-fold. I need to have a setup that allows a wide range of dynamics and pitches and can accurately capture tone quality. Nearly everything I will be recording will be Classical music (pre-Bach through contemporary). Another concern I face is that I am not allowed to edit recordings in any way. So I need to have a program that focuses on recording vs. editing.
As I've been looking through the forums here I've noticed that Garage Band 3 only records 16 bit sound, is there a better alternative for me to use? When I was doing this on PC I was able to record in 24 bit because of the soundcard I was using.
Any suggestions or nudges would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.
15.4" MacBook Pro 2.16GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1GB of RAM