Hi I am using Cakewalk 8 on Windows 8. I have a new laptop and I am having trouble getting setup. I can no longer use my MOTU 896HD, I have no firewire, so I do not have an audio interface. I am trying to use the sound card for my laptop, but it will not work. Error say that either the audio card is not compatible or in use by another application. Then I am unable to select any inputs for my audio.

Try switching to MME drivers, or ASIO4ALL (free DL). It maybe SONAR is set to a sample rate and drivers the integrated chip does not support. DAW work will be very glitchy with the onboard chip, it's recommendable to get a USB interface.

Basically it just will never work properly, I have tried myself a few times with both new and old laptops that I had Sonar 8.5 installed in.
I tried asio4all and there was terrible latency. MIDI / audio Tracks don't line up.  MME works best but seemed to only allow me to use the MS wavetable , soft synths would be 3 seconds late. 

This is becoming the issue with firewire as it is slowly becoming obsolete. 

wguitarman - you'll save yourself a lot of time and stress if you just hop on board the idea that you should get an external USB audio interface. 

There are plenty of options for that and they are not prohibitively expensive. 

If you look under the Hardware section of this forum you'll see several threads commenting on suggestions for these audio interface units.

Like a Presonus Audiobox USB or Focusrite Scarlett 212U

BTW, sucks cant use your MOTU 896HD which is a great interface still, it will be destined to become a dinosaur in the near future, not for its performance but its output to firewire, as with many things that were great and the wave of high tech and changing standards sweeps them away... 
Good luck 

SPAMMER UP ABOVE REPORTED   ^ ^ ^ ^

Spammer?  Far from it my friend; I scratched off some of what I said due to the wordy writing style, carried away typing 100 words per minute, cuz I can TYPE...  But it was highly relevant and I'm not here to spam. 
Thanks

A word of advise- wait for the OP to respond before expending time and effort on lengthy replies.  

wguitarman


Hi I am using Cakewalk 8 on Windows 8. I have a new laptop and I am having trouble getting setup. I can no longer use my MOTU 896HD, I have no firewire, so I do not have an audio interface. I am trying to use the sound card for my laptop, but it will not work. Error say that either the audio card is not compatible or in use by another application. Then I am unable to select any inputs for my audio.

what kind of on-board audio do you have?? reaktek or conexant? i've got loads of experience with both in win7 and 8.  they can run well if you set them up ok.  running about 57 audio tracks on a realtek sometimes with about 5-10ms of latency depending on plugins and others with about 10 16-instrument/16-out vsts with the same kinds of latency as well.  processor has a lot to do with it.