Beginner with a couple of really dumb questions.

[Mike Bovee]

I have a Cakewalk UA-1G interface to record on my Cakewalk program.  After recording I can only listen to the tracs by using headphones in the interface because that's what I set in the output drop down before recording.  If I want to just turn on my computer and listen to my Cakewalk projects, how do I reset the output to hear it on my computer speakers?

Also, does any of this have anything to do with projects that I send via email to others to listen to?  What do I have to do to send tracs via email or to an on line forum?  No one can hear what I send.

Additional info: If I boot up Cakewalk without my interface plugged in I get a message stating that I must go to Preferences-etc...to select a different audio driver.  When I do this, there aren't any listed.  I'm confused.

Thanks.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Mike Bovee

[CJ Jacobson]

Quote

If I want to just turn on my computer and listen to my Cakewalk projects, how do I reset the output to hear it on my computer speakers?

If you want to do that, you have 2 choices. You can get a speaker switcher that switches between your studio monitors and PC speakers, if its external speakers and not laptop speakers. note you will still need to turn your audio interface on. I use the Coleman SPK5+1  switchwer. Its great, i can switch between 5 different pairs of speakers and a sub.

if you want to use your PC's built in sound card, then you need to enable it and disable your audio interface

12 hours ago, Mike Bovee said:

Also, does any of this have anything to do with projects that I send via email to others to listen to?  What do I have to do to send tracs via email or to an on line forum?  No one can hear what I send.

No, speaker choice has nothing to do with sending project via email.  

To send music files, i use hightail.com. i can send up to 2 gigs for a small yearly fee. As far as you posting music to a forum for people to hear, you need to publish it and provide links to it, like soundcloud..

[abacab]

If you have both the PC built-in audio and your audio interface enabled, you can configure Cakewalk to use either device as the "master" output.

You can also have Windows configured to use either audio output as the default for Windows and other application sounds.

But you will need to have either your headphones, or powered speakers, connected to your chosen outputs to hear anything.

Some folks use two sets of speakers, or as was mentioned, just switch one set of speakers between the audio outputs in use.  If you do this you can assign the built-in audio to Windows sounds, and assign the dedicated audio interface exclusively to your DAW, such as Cakewalk.

On my setup,  I have disabled the built-in audio in my system and assigned my audio for both Windows and my DAW to use my audio interface and one set of powered monitor speakers.

To send your recording files over the internet for somebody to hear, you should use a file format that the recipient has a player for. The simplest way to let someone listen to your songs is to export them in MP3 format. Then preview them with an MP3 player on your computer to make sure you are not exporting a blank audio file. Read the help files relating to track selection for the export process.

Edited February 1, 2019 by abacab