Unable to open audio playback device

[CTL 21]

I just installed Cakewalk yesterday, and when I tried recording with my microphone, It gave me an error.

I also tried playing the project and it gave me this message: "Unable to open audio playback device. Device may not support the current projects audio format or may be in use." Now, I might've tweaked the audio settings a bit so that might be why weird things are happening. I've tried reinstalling the program but it still doesn't work.

[CTL 21]

I think I solved the problem by switching it to WASAPI shared.

[57Gregy]

Welcome to the forum.
We need some more information.
What are you using to make sound? A computer sound card or an external audio interface?
What mic are you using?
This is most often caused by the audio input device and Cakewalk by Bandlab (CbB) having different sampling rates. look in the device's settings and in CbB's 
Preferences (keyboard key 'P') and set them to the same value, such as 48,000 kHz. See if that helps.

[reginaldStjohn]

This usually means that windows or some other application is using the same audio card as Cakewalk is trying to use. Best to look at some of the tutorials in the tutorials forum. https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/forum/35-tutorials/

[CTL 21]

Update: I discovered that the problem is that my EQ (FxSound) supports WDM/KS, not ASIO (which I was using at that time) (I found this by looking at VoiceMeeter). But when I switched it to KS, FxSound was nowhere to be seen! However, when I switched it to MME, (yes the choppy sounding one) it kinda worked? However, the choppiness was bugging me out. 

This problem is very strange this.

I also want to explain that in ASIO mode, only VM appears. I also tried changing my output in VM to my speaker and my speaker IN FXSOUND* to VM. That just made it silent because VM told me: "Bad Audio Driver Installation!", and I had to go to Check Driver Installation. That's where I found that FxSound was KS.

Edited December 8, 2022 by CTL 21
Addition & Correction

[CTL 21]

i checked the check driver thing and apparently VM AUX VAIO and VM VAI03 are not installed idk what happened with that

 

[CTL 21]

I did reset preferences and change it to correct preferences.

[msmcleod]

@CTL 21 - One thing you should be aware of...

You can only use one ASIO driver at a time per application ( this is a Steinberg restriction on Windows), and quite often this also means that only one application can use this ASIO driver, closing it off for all other applications when in use.

So this means:
1. You can't have one ASIO device for input, and a different ASIO device for output
2. If VoiceMeeter is using ASIO for a device, Cakewalk can't use it.

If you need to use more than one device, you can either use WASAPI shared or WDM in Cakewalk.  There are small complications, such as lack of word-clock sync, so the timing may need to be tweaked after recording, but it will work.

My main advice would be to anyone using Windows is, don't use USB microphones for anything other than voice-over recordings or Zoom meetings.  You are far better off using the XLR equivalent.

In addition to the above reason:

1.  The XLR equivalent can plug straight into any decent audio interface, everything will work using the same ASIO device.
2.  An XLR mic will work with anything - stand-alone pre-amps, studio & PA mixers, audio interfaces etc. 
3.  In years to come when the USB drivers no longer work on some future version of Windows, an XLR mic will continue to work regardless.
4.  With a USB mic, you're stuck with the mic pre-amp built into the mic, which in most cases will be far inferior to any decent audio interface.