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2 hours ago, David Baay said:

If another app is using the driver, CbB will not be able to see it.

That's actually not true in the case of the M2 driver. I can even record in multiple apps simultaneously. I can hit record in Cake and hit record in S1, start playing my guitar, and it will record in both. It's kind of a ridiculously good driver.

6 minutes ago, bdickens said:

Nope.

You can have tracks armed for recording and play back your project all day long without hitting record.

Duh (kidding). I'm just saying the message wording doesn't make sense, but the armed track may have triggered the wording. Programming "logic."

Could be an issue with anti-virus software. Here's a thread on the old SONAR forum:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/Unable-to-create-new-audio-file-for-recording-m3746652.aspx

You're only hitting play but you have a track armed for recording, so that might account for the wording of the message.

29 minutes ago, Michael McBroom said:

Lord Tim, I would prefer, if at all possible, not to have to restrict the driver mode to ASIO only. As I'm sure you aware, with ASIO it's ASIO or nothing. There are times when I need this machine to share. I first ran into ASIO's recalcitrant behavior when I was attempting to run an amp's USB Line Out into my machine. ASIO insisted the amp was a synth, thus not allowing me to record its audio.  I've been using WASAPI (shared) for the past 8 months without issues. Also, perhaps it  bears repeating, I tried all 5 driver modes that CW supports, and it didn't make any difference with any of them.

After John reminded me how to configure my MOTU properly, I was then able to determine that the same situation occurs even if I don't have the Input Echo engaged. All I have to do is set it up to record, and it locks up. I don't have Magix or Steinberger drivers on this system. I've just reinstalled the latest drivers for the MOTU. There's nothing in its operational parameters that I'm aware of that allow me to select the driver mode. It's worth noting, however, one of the main reasons why I bought the MOTU was because it supported more driver modes than ASIO.

You set the driver mode in cakewalk. Press "p" with cakewalk open, click Playback and Recording in left pane and switch Driver Mode to ASIO. Change buffer size in the ASIO panel under the Driver Settings tab in the left pane. I would definitely use ASIO over any other mode.

EDIT: Missed the part where you said you already tried other modes, although I'm not really sure if you're talking about the MOTU or the amp output. Does the amp show up as its own input?

1 hour ago, David Baay said:

I would also advise doing the opposite of this:

I always recommend leaving onboard audio enabled and set as the default audio device for use by Windows, browsers and other generic multimedia apps so they don't try to grab your interface driver.

But definitely don't skip the step of temporarily disabling it in device manager. You're looking for a possible driver conflict.

The MOTU is actually excellent at sharing audio with the OS and has a loopback feature that enables any sound from Windows to show up as an input in DAWs.

A few things to try:

Rename your aud.ini file and let cakewalk recreate it.

Try a different USB port (unless you're already using USB-C with the MOTU and USB-A with the other interface).

If you have onboard audio like Realtek enabled, try temporarily disabling it.

Here's another long shot: Check your CPU temperature (or graphics card temp). I have to blast dust out of my CPU fan every several months or the fan bogs down. The CPU starts runing too hot in a demanding app like Cake, and audio starts to crackle. Audio is generally fine for less intense tasks like streaming video, etc. The crackling also gets gradually worse over time. So it may not be your problem, but it's worth looking into, because it took me a while to figure that one out. Some locations are dustier than others.