I don't know if I'm accurate with my prediction but I think the audio from Cakewalk is being modified before being fed to the speakers. What do I base this theory on? Well when I export my audio it sounds different when played back in VLC or similar software (more on that here:  ) But once I load it back inside the DAW and play it, it sounds like the original project! at first I thought that the problem lies in the export but now my theory is: ( I will use the term "weird compression"