Need some help with recording

Bamber19

Hi i'm trying to record some vocals just now using a Shure 55SH with an XLR lead to Jack, then that into a jack converor which is coming out at the size for a pc mic input. When i record stuff it sounds watery and i'vejust noticed that if i switch the mic off whilst recording i get a sharp peak or trough on the soundwave for a . of a second but it continues recording at the same quality. i assumed then that my shure mic wasn't beingnoticed by the laptop and that it wasusiong the small hole mic that is built in to it but tapping this shows no response so it's definitely not recording that so i'm left totally confused.

Bamber19

ok, i've jsut realised that the main part of the problem is that it's recrding the backing track aswell as the vocals, even with headphones in...how do i get it to only record what's going in from the mic?

£$&*"($£&(

Your soundcard probably has a "what you hear" option which it also records what is playing. You need to go to the soundcards mixer and deselect this option. The other problem is that using the mic input on a pc soundcard is unlikely to produce good results. These are cheap poor quality noisy inputs. A dedicated audio interface with an xlr input will produce much better results.