The first thing you should know about this is that you can actually customize it. This of course does not include third party plugins and unfortunately it doesn’t include plugins that come with the DAW either. If you do need a bit of a hand, there’s a helper window on the bottom right that will tell you about what you hover over in cakewalk. I want to talk about a few things in the menu or control bar so you can actually use this digital audio workstation effectively. Make sure the box is checked off for suspend audio engine when cakewalk is not in focus and once it is, you’ll be able to play back media outside of the DAW but not when it’s open or in focus, which just means when the DAW is the last thing you clicked. If you can’t play videos or audio outside of the doll when you have it running, you’ll need to make a small tweak in the playback and recording section under audio.

Simply add the folders you’ve installed your plugins to then press scan. And last, but obviously not least, you can set up your plugins by going to VST settings.

You can set up the folder locations for things such as your way files or samples. 16 or 24 bits should be fine for pretty much all audio right above that. Now go down to audio data under file to set the bit depth. This will affect the quality of your audio and for regular music I would suggest using 44.1 or 48 kilohertz. To set the sample rate, go-to driver settings under audio and down to default settings for new projects. Then to preferences at the bottom of the dropdown. Let’s get started with setting up the DAW so you can record at the proper quality and so you can actually use your plugins and samples go to edit. You’ll need to launch cakewalk from the band lab assistant once you’ve installed both.

How to set up cakewalk by bandlab