Loopback confusion

[smatthews1999]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post! Yay!

I purchased a MOTU M2 and I really like it. Great interface and quality product.

With it I am endeavoring to record myself playing an instrument, vocals and some backing tracks off my PC using loopback.

I am using the most recent version of Cakewalk by Bandlab.

My hardware is the MOTU M2, a condenser mic, an electric guitar, and the PC with output set to the MOTU. The MOTU has as output 2 studio monitor speakers.

Most of it is going swimmingly well. I am setting up 3 audio tracks
track 1 guitar,
track 2 mic,
track 3 loopback 1

When I record, I am getting plenty of input and adjusting each input via the source on the MOTU, and I can (almost) get it right.

What is super confusing is the Loopback channel. My desire is to isolate the PC output (backing track) and adjust it independent of the guitar/vocals, but what ends up happening is the guitar and vocals are coming through the loopback, and the input of the loopback channel grows and grows, each time I increase the guitar/vocals.

I know this kind of makes sense, because all my PC output is going to the MOTU, and thus the loopback... but I don't know how else to arrange it. I have experimented with setting "Monitor" on/off on the M2 and "playback" on Cakewalk, but can't figure it out.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Sam