Cakewalk | Exporting Projects for Another DAW 

Important MIDI distinction: MIDI Format 0 collapses all of your MIDI data into a SINGLE TRACK. MIDI Format 1 keeps everything in its own individual track. I use MIDI extensively and export MIDI files quite a bit. Selecting the unintended format can result in a wasted studio session.

Everyone is jumping off the cakewalk ship. All aboard Studio One! 😂

Mike, please suggest to Studio One developers to make a patch that simply imports entire Cakewalk files. That would attract many longtime Cakewalk users like me with hundreds of Cakewalk files.

If you have a dual (multi) monitor setup, you can have CWbB on one, and the new StudioOne on the other, and when you import you can confirm you got everything you intended to port over

Great timing. I am just starting to look at Studio One and moving my projects from Cakewalk. Thanks for all the great tips.

Cakewalk has announced it is no longer going to be free. I’m already transitioning to Reaper. So this is helpful.

For some projects, I save another CWF only with mixed stems (freezed) and if I'll share it, I save another with pure stems without mixing or fx added

Hope you are feeling and doing better!

YES! I’ve been waiting for a video like this for Cakewalk specifically. I started a musical project with my friend who uses FL, so this helps a ton. Thank you

This is great. I will now revisit my process in exporting some old Cakewalk projects when I exported them a few years back when I switched to Cubase. The tip to snap several screenshots is brilliant!

Thanks Mike. Hope you are feeling better.

Thanks Mike for the insightful (and very useful) video! I've been contemplating getting Studio One, but was afraid I would not be able to transfer my Cakewalk files without a serious fuss. You've shown me it's less work than I thought and a quite bit more achievable than I thought. Thanks!

Awesome video Mike! I'm moving over to Reaper from Cakewalk, so this video is super useful and will help me out a lot. Thank you for taking the time to explain the process in a detailed and easy to understand way, just like all your other excellent vids. 👍👍

Hi Mike. I've been using Cakewalk, Sonar, Cakewalk for a long time, and I've still learned a lot from you and my workflows are better. There is one nagging thing I can't find anywhere and perhaps you can explore this. I use Cakewalk a lot for recording my band when we rehearse. We fiddle about a lot and such and you never quite know what's going to happen from one jam to the next. Different effects on guitars, synths, keys, Multi singers, different mics and positions in the room, and various electric drum kits (no acoustic drums in our small room anymore, thank the gods) means I'm stuck doing a fair bit of editing for sound normalization on the backend. While I don't spend a lot of time producing the jam sessions, I boil them down to MP3 and post them for the guys afterward. They're OK recordings for live playing, but It would be great to have the ultimate setup for recording a live band so the best nominal inputs, best way to eliminate bleed across mics (vocals and guitar amps), any useful gain staging to deal with signal droop and spikes. While I route stuff to busses and sends for some general Reverb to the vocals, and I've got my recording templates set with the ProChannel EQ and Compressor already, but there are probably better ways. We have split signal from our instruments, direct lines to audio interface and the other to our amps. I generally take both signals, and blend them together, but the mic lines always sound of room and garbage, so it's mostly direct lines. Which is OK, but you know...... Whatcha' think Mike? Show me the way!

Super useful video Mike and very relevant at this time. I already developed my own process for exporting Cakewalk projects for use in Studio One, but you showed some additional tips which I didn't think about. Taking screenshots of the console setting is one example, but the most useful is knowing that opening the transferred midi file shows markers and the tempo track. That's definitely worth knowing.

thank you so much for your help god bless you and your family

Get well soon Mike!

Hello from Stephen in Ireland, Mike. Nice one - and will be perfect if I move to Studio 1 soon!! Sorry to hear that you're still a bit under the weather.

I hope you get well soon.

Interesting how everyone is jumping ship before they even know what's coming. There will be a lot of recording time lost in the process. I'm sitting tight for now. Thanks Mike for the lesson.

Excellent Mike! I was in two minds about what to do with having a DAW all together after hearing the latest Cakewalk news. But I have bitten the bullet and subscribed to Presonus Studio One Sphere. I don't really like subscription, but I thought that I can try it out and cancel at any time if I decide I dont like it, or decide to buy a perpetual one off. I must say that upon trying out Presonus Studio One, it is better than I imagined. I love it. The Video features are important to me as I also do Voice Overs as well as Music. 😎 I will try out these Export ideas on my Cakewalk projects. Thanks again. I'm very interested in all your Cakewalk to Studio One content. Please keep it coming. Best regards Phill ;-)

The information is very useful, but also very discouraging, as many of us are heavily invested (blood, sweat, and tears, but in my case financially, too) in Cakewalk, as well as in all of your excellent tutorials about Cakewalk. "As for me and my house", if I must pay for a DAW, it will be the new SONAR, but I get the feeling that you are planning to transition away from Cakewalk. I hope this isn't the case, but I am thankful that "the Internet is forever" and all of your previous videos will remain, even if you choose to move on... However, I will go on record as hoping you will continue to support Cakewalk, whether Bandlab or the new SONAR. Thank you for everything, and "I hope you are well".

Great information

Good useful video Mike. As an adjunct there’s a good article about this very topic from Craig Anderson in SoundonSound February 2018

Damn, I just saw the announcement that they are discontinuing free Cakewalk. Can't say I'm surprised; I never understood the business model. Oh well, time for some damage control export work! Well timed video, thanks Mike.

Thanks Mike ! You sound like you’re suffering flu .. hope you recover sooner ..

Super helpful video, thanks. One question, if I have a track with multiple takes for comping do I need to export differently?

Thank you, Mike. This is great information. I hope you'll be feeling better quickly, cause you sound like hell.

What about using Broadcast Wave as it includes “Time Stamp” so that it can be placed properly in new DAW?

hi mike. could you do a tutorial on how to setup multi audio outputs in native instruments battery 4 in cakewalk?

There's literally no way to do this that's not a time consuming, complete, pain in the butt. Especially if you have a LOT of stuff to transfer. I had material that I wrote that dated back to Cakewalk 1. and through all the Sonar releases. Then, when Sonar got discontinued, I remember deciding that if I wanted to use all the new software, I really had to migrate to something else, like Cubase. And oh my god. I had a library of about 100 songs, many with dozens and dozens and dozens of tracks and settings and pluggins. There was just NO easy way to do this. For the longest time, I was griping about the fact that not a single one of these companies has ever thought to standardize their formats to prevent having to export midi tracks, export audio tracks, and then reconstructing them in the new DAW while trying to recreate all the settings properly. It took forever for me to migrate everything. I really wish that the industry would standardize a lot of stuff so that most files would be interchangeable between DAWS. But I guess that wouldn't be good business. They don't want you to switch DAWS so they want to make it as difficult and cumbersome as possible. It's good business for them. But it's an absolute pain for us musicians.

🔥🔥🔥🔥

Hello 😊 There are news on the internet and RU-vid that Cakewalk will no longer free forever... BandLab is planning to launch paid version of Cakewalk by rebranding it as Cakewalk Next. Please make video regarding to this topic

Hello. May i ask what specifically does ''Apply Trimming'' option do to the recorded audio track? Thanks.

I feel your voice is quite changed, I hope you are well

How do you get the full channel strip with the tracks at the top?

Is Cakewalk sabotaging their own Daw? Ever since they announced the end of the free version, my Cakewalk takes forever to load and sometimes crashing before it even opens. The only work around is to turn off the wifi. Which is strange. Like they are trying to update or insert something into my version.

Do you know a way to export and then import automation lanes?

Do Cakewalk tracks that have been Archived need to be unarchived for this process?

What is the best alternative instead of Cakewalk right now? Studio one?

Hmmm only my drums showed up

Yall should get a real daw like Pro Tools, Logic, or Ableton if you are trying to be serious with engineering. Moving to another free Daw isn't gonna help you much. FL and REAPER are very limited. Do your research on good daws and pick the best one for you

Don't know whether you are aware Mike that there is a simple way to open CbB projects in Reaper shown here [ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hmfK-R8IKu0.html ] by 'XEL Ohh' . This may help someone out. All transfers except most of the Pro Channel modules (Eq will transfer). Once set up simply in Reaper just drag and drop CbB project file on reaper. Then save to Reaper.

How do I connect to distro kids through you to get a discount

This is great! What about ProChannel stuff? CW users can share presets, but for other DAWs you'd have to take screenshots of all your settings? Feel better soon Mike!