Laybell Studio™

Join and host online studio sessions with artists from anywhere — pro mics and interfaces, FL Studio / BandLab audio, and one-tap vocal polish.

Before you join. Use Chrome or Edge — choosing your own output device and sharing app audio are both Chromium-only. Staying on ASIO is fine, and it is required if you want to record the artist into your DAW. Send your beat down a cable (step 2 once you are in) rather than through Share app audio: a screen share cannot capture a device ASIO is holding exclusively, so that route publishes silence. Only if you insist on Share app audio do you need a Windows/WASAPI driver instead.

Interface

your gear
In sessionconnected
Send to my DAW — optional, for recording

General setup

3 steps · tap to open
  1. Choose your mic.
    Pick your interface in the box above. Leave the preset on Raw input for an interface, an instrument, or anything already mixed — the signal then reaches the room untouched. The voice presets add real EQ and compression, which is right for a bare vocal and wrong for a beat. Watch the meter move before you go on.
  2. Send your beat.
    Two ways, and the second is far more reliable on Windows.
    Best — send it as your “microphone”. No screen capture involved, so nothing can quietly capture silence, and the room can never leak back into your DAW. 1. Your DAW's audio output → CABLE Input. 2. In the Microphone / audio interface box above, choose CABLE Output, preset Raw input. 3. Hear your own DAW again: Win+R → mmsys.cpl → Recording → CABLE Output → Properties → Listen → tick “Listen to this device” → your headphones.
    Your mic can still ride along — set it as your DAW's input and it reaches the room through the same pipe, through your own chain. Needs VB-CABLE (see the recording guide, Part 1).

    Or — share app audio. Hit Share app audio, tick “Share audio.” Quicker, nothing to install, but Chrome on Windows usually offers that checkbox only for a Chrome Tab or Entire Screen — a Window share often carries no audio at all, and fails silently. Watch the shared-audio meter above: if it says no signal while your DAW is playing, use the method above instead.

  3. Hear them — nothing to install.
    Leave your DAW's output and this browser's output both on your headphones. Your beat and their vocal mix in your ears and you are done: no extra software, no routing, and the artist can never hear themselves.
    Do not send the room back into your DAW unless you follow the recording guide exactly. Chrome shares your DAW's whole master, so the moment their vocal plays inside your DAW it is being sent straight back to them — they hear themselves a beat late, and it can build into a howl. This is the most common way to break a session.

Guides

open only what you need
Set up FL Studio, start to finishproducer

Do these in order. Almost every problem in a studio session comes from doing them out of order — above all, finish FL before you join. Changing FL's audio device later rebuilds its window and quietly breaks a running share.

Before you start: install VB-CABLE (see the recording guide, Part 1). Add VB-CABLE A+B as well if you want the artist recorded onto your timeline.

1 · Sample rates — 48000 Hz, once. Win+R → mmsys.cpl. For each device: click it → Properties → Advanced → pick any 48000 Hz entry under Default Format. Do it for CABLE Input and CABLE-B Input on the Playback tab, and CABLE Output and CABLE-B Output on the Recording tab. Four devices, each set separately, all shipping on 44100.

2 · FL audio settings. Options → Audio Settings:
· Device → FL Studio ASIO
· Sample rate → 48000
· Show ASIO panel → Output: CABLE Input · Input: CABLE-B Output
Then close it and do not come back this session.

ASIO is required if you want to record. FL cannot record audio on DirectSound at all — the mixer's IN box greys out, because that driver gives FL no inputs.

3 · Hear your own beat. FL now plays into a cable, not your headphones. Back in mmsys.cpl → Recording → CABLE Output → Properties → Listen → tick “Listen to this device” → choose your headphones → Apply.

4 · Join, then set your inputs. Open this page with the session code. Then at the top:
· Microphone / audio interface → CABLE Output — this is your beat going out
· Vocal preset → Raw input — never a voice preset, they EQ and compress a finished mix
Play something and watch the meter move before you go further.

Your own voice rides along. Set your mic or interface as FL's input and it reaches the room through the same cable — and through your own FL chain, which sharing a window never allowed. Note you cannot do this AND record the artist: FL takes one input device at a time.

5 · Record the artist — optional.
· Send to my DAW (above) → the artist → CABLE-B Input
· FL Mixer → empty insert → IN → in 1
· Mute that insert's send to Master — click the arrow between it and Master
· Arm the insert (the record circle at the bottom of the strip)
· Song mode, then Record → Play → “Audio, into the playlist”

The master send is the one that bites. Your FL master is what the room hears. Leave the artist's vocal in it and you send them their own voice a beat late — instant echo, and they cannot rap over it. You will still hear them from “Listen to this device”, and it still records, because FL records the track's INPUT, not the master.

6 · Check before the take. Artist hears the beat · you hear the artist · no echo · the FL insert meter moves when they rap. That last one is the one people skip — hearing them is not proof FL has them, because listen-through works whether FL is wired up or not.

Set up BandLab, start to finishproducer

BandLab Studio runs in a browser tab, and that makes it the easiest setup here. A Chrome Tab share is the one screen-share case Chrome on Windows handles properly, so there is no cable to install, no ASIO, and nothing to undo afterwards.

Using Cakewalk — BandLab's desktop DAW — instead? Follow the FL Studio guide. It is a desktop DAW with a real ASIO driver and the routing there applies to it unchanged.

1 · Two tabs. Open BandLab Studio in its own tab and load your beat. Keep this page in a separate tab. Both can use audio at once; they do not fight.

2 · Join here, then share the tab. Hit Share app audio → the Chrome Tab row → pick the BandLab tab → tick “Share audio” → Share.

You do not lose your own beat. Tab capture copies the audio, it does not take it away, so it keeps playing in your headphones with no “Listen to this device” step. Play something and watch the shared-audio meter — if it stays flat you shared the wrong tab, or missed the tick box.

3 · Your mic, separately. In Microphone / audio interface pick your mic or interface — preset Natural voice for a bare mic, Raw input for an interface. Your voice and your beat go out as two independent streams here, which is cleaner than the single-cable route a desktop DAW needs.

4 · Hearing them. Nothing to do. Leave this browser's output on your headphones; their vocal and your beat meet in your ears.

5 · Record the artist into BandLab — optional. Needs VB-CABLE (recording guide, Part 1).
· Send to my DAW (in the console) → the artist → CABLE Input
· In BandLab, add an Audio / Voice track and set its input to CABLE Output
· Turn that track's input monitoring OFF, then arm it and record

If BandLab only offers your default input, point the default at the cable instead: Win+R → mmsys.cpl → Recording → CABLE Output → Set Default. Or set it for BandLab alone — click the padlock in Chrome's address bar → Site settings → Microphone. This page is unaffected either way; it has its own picker.
Anything playing in that tab goes to the room. You are sharing the tab, not a track. Monitor the artist's vocal in BandLab and it goes straight back to them a beat late — that is the echo, and they cannot rap over it. Leave monitoring off; you still hear them from this page, and the track still records, because it records its input.
A tab share is bound to that tab. Close it, or navigate it somewhere else, and the room goes quiet with no error. Re-share if you do.
Set up Pro Tools, start to finishproducer

The principle never changes: your DAW's output has to reach this page as an input device, and the room must never reach your master. Only the dialogs differ — Setup → Playback Engine chooses the device, Setup → I/O maps the paths. Pro Tools has not been run against this page here; the routing below is the one proven with FL Studio, through Pro Tools' two dialogs.

Windows · getting your beat out. Pro Tools only talks to ASIO, and VB-CABLE is not an ASIO device — Pro Tools cannot see it at all. Two ways round, best first.

A · Your interface's loopback — no install, no wrapper, and Pro Tools stays on its own driver at your normal buffer. Most modern interfaces have one: Focusrite Control's Loopback, Audient EVO, SSL 2+, MOTU, Behringer UMC, RME TotalMix. It carries your Pro Tools output back as a recordable input. Pick that loopback channel in Microphone / audio interface above, preset Raw input.

B · ASIO4ALL — a free WDM-to-ASIO wrapper that can show VB-CABLE to Pro Tools. Setup → Playback Engine → ASIO4ALL, then in its panel enable CABLE Input for output and CABLE-B Output for input. Expect more latency than your interface's own driver, and set every cable endpoint to 48000 Hz first (FL guide, step 1 — the same four devices).

Mac. Core Audio, so nothing to wrap. Install BlackHole (free). In Audio MIDI Setup build a Multi-Output Device containing BlackHole and your headphones, and point Pro Tools' Playback Engine at it — the room gets the beat and you still hear it. Then choose BlackHole in Microphone / audio interface above.

I/O Setup is where the silence comes from. After any Playback Engine change, open Setup → I/O and check your Output path is still mapped to channels 1–2 of the new device. Changing the engine can leave paths unmapped, and Pro Tools then plays perfectly into nothing — meters moving, room silent.

Record the artist — optional.
· Send to my DAW → the artist → the second cable (CABLE-B Input on Windows, a second BlackHole device on Mac)
· New audio track, input = that device · input monitoring off · record-arm · record

Take that track off your main output. Pro Tools' main output is what the room hears. Leave the artist's vocal in it and you send them their own voice a beat late — instant echo. Set the track's output to a bus you are not sending, or mute it. You will still hear them from this page, and it still records, because Pro Tools records the track's input, not the master.

Check before the take. Artist hears the beat · you hear the artist · no echo · the Pro Tools track meter moves when they rap. That last one is the one people skip — hearing them is not proof Pro Tools has them.

Get the best-sounding takequality
Closed-back headphones on the artist. This is the big one. If they monitor on their phone speaker, their microphone hears the beat and sends it back up — and it prints underneath the vocal on your recording as a thin, low-quality copy. Nothing on your end can remove what their mic genuinely heard. Closed-back headphones remove the path entirely; earbuds and open-backs leak enough to still hear it.

Keep their headphone volume moderate. Loud monitoring leaks more, and the phone's echo canceller is doing the cleanup — the quieter the beat at the mic, the less residue survives.

The artist should be on a VOICE preset — Natural, Low, Mid or High — not Raw input. Raw deliberately turns echo cancellation off, which is right for an interface carrying a finished mix and exactly wrong for someone rapping next to a speaker.

You should be on Raw input, for the opposite reason: your cable is carrying a mix, and the voice presets would EQ and compress it.

Expect the take to land behind the grid. The vocal travelled phone → room → your machine and that delay is in the file. Record a clap on the first take, measure how late it lands, then drag every take back by that amount.

For anything you intend to keep, do not track it through the room at all. Have the artist record on their phone and send you the file — it arrives dry, clean and perfectly in time. Use the live take as the reference while you write, and swap it for theirs.

The room can't hear my beatcommon

First: watch the shared-audio meter under the buttons while your DAW plays. No signal there means the beat is not leaving your machine, and everything below applies. Live means it is leaving, and the problem is elsewhere.

The usual cause on Windows: you shared a Window. Chrome normally offers the “Share audio” checkbox only for a Chrome Tab or Entire Screen — pick a Window and the share is often video-only, publishing perfect silence with no error anywhere. If your mic reaches the room but your beat does not, this is almost certainly why.
The fix that always works: stop sharing and send the beat as your microphone instead — see step 2. Entire Screen with system audio does carry the beat, but it also captures Laybell's own output, which sends the artist their own voice back.

Also worth checking: the “Share audio” checkbox is off by default and sits low in the dialog.

Was it working, then went quiet? Re-share. A share is bound to one window. Change your DAW's audio device — or do anything else that rebuilds its window — and Chrome drops the share silently. The room goes quiet with no error and the button does not always show it. Check this first whenever the beat stops arriving, especially just after touching audio settings.

Still silent with the share definitely running? Then your driver has taken the sound card exclusively and nothing reaches Windows for Chrome to capture. A hardware ASIO driver or ASIO4ALL does this. FL Studio ASIO is meant to share the device and usually works — but if the room cannot hear you while the share is live, believe the room, not the driver.

Fix: set your DAW's Device to a DirectSound or WASAPI entry — your interface's own Speakers (…) line — instead of ASIO.

But not if you are recording the artist. FL Studio cannot record audio on DirectSound — the mixer's IN box goes grey, because that driver hands FL no inputs at all. If you need both the share AND recording, you cannot have them: send the beat as your microphone instead (step 2), which frees you to stay on ASIO and record normally.
Record their take into my DAWoptional

You need this only if you want their vocal on a track while you work. Hearing them needs none of it. Windows cannot hand a browser's audio to a DAW on its own, so this one needs a free driver — and there is a cleaner route at the bottom worth reading first.

Part 1 — install VB-CABLE (about 3 minutes)

Download — vb-audio.com/Cable, the Windows download. Free. You get a .zip.

Unzip — right-click it → Extract All.

Install — in that folder, right-click VBCABLE_Setup_x64.exe → Run as administrator → Install Driver.

Reboot. Nothing works until you do.

You now have two new audio devices, and they are two ends of one pipe:
CABLE Input = a speaker. Audio you send INTO the pipe.
CABLE Output = a microphone. Audio coming OUT of the pipe.

Part 2 — send the artist to the second cable
You need a second cable. If your beat goes out as your microphone (step 2 above), the first cable is already full — it carries your DAW to the room, and pushing the room back down it would feed it into itself. Get VB-CABLE A+B from the same vb-audio.com/Cable page, install it the same way, reboot. You then have CABLE-B Input and CABLE-B Output.

Now use Send to my DAW at the top of this page:

1. First box → the artist.
2. Second box → CABLE-B Input.

That is the whole step. No Windows sound settings, no listen-through, nothing else to undo.

Why this is better than pointing the browser at the cable. Sending the whole browser sends the whole ROOM — everyone at once — and takes your monitoring with it, so you then need listen-through just to hear again. This puts one person on the cable, on a second copy of their audio, so your headphones keep working exactly as they did and your DAW receives only the take.
Chrome or Edge only — Safari and Firefox cannot choose an output, and the line under the boxes will say so rather than failing quietly.
Part 3 — get the pipe into your mixer
“The IN box is greyed out.” You are on DirectSound. FL Studio cannot record audio on DirectSound at all — that driver exposes no inputs to FL, so there is nothing for the box to offer. Recording in FL requires ASIO. This is an FL limitation, not a cable problem, and no amount of routing fixes it.
If the page sent you to DirectSound earlier, that was to fix Share app audio — and it is the right call while you use the share. The moment you send the beat as your microphone instead, the share is out of the picture and ASIO is safe again. Switch back.

1. Set Device to an ASIO driver — FL Studio ASIO is the friendly one. There is only ONE Device box on ASIO, for input and output together; both live inside the driver instead. Click “Show ASIO panel”, just under Buffer length, and set:
· Input → CABLE-B Output — the room, so you can record it
· Output → CABLE Input — your DAW going out to the room as your microphone

“My mixer only shows in 1 and in 2.” That is correct on ASIO and nothing is wrong. ASIO names channels, not devices, so CABLE-B Output will never appear there by name — those two entries ARE it, once the ASIO panel points at it. Audio Settings confirms it on the status line: “1x2 inputs available”.

2. Open the Mixer and click an empty insert track.

3. At the top of the mixer, open the IN dropdown and pick in 1 (or in 2).

4. Check the meter before anything else. Get the artist to talk and watch that insert's peak meter. Moving = your DAW has the signal. Dead = it does not, and no amount of pressing record will help.

Careful — you can hear them without your DAW receiving anything. “Listen to this device” from Part 2 sends the artist to your headphones through WINDOWS, around your DAW completely. It sounds identical whether the DAW is wired up or not. The meter is the only honest test. Hearing them with a dead meter means step 1 did not take.
Now MUTE that track's send to Master — this one is not optional. Your DAW's master is what reaches the room, whether it goes out as your microphone or through a screen share. Leave the artist's vocal sitting in it and you send them their own voice, a beat late, and the echo is back. Click the little arrow between that insert and Master to switch the send off.
You will still hear them, from “Listen to this device” — that is Windows, not your DAW. And it still records, because a DAW records the track's INPUT, not the master.
One input device at a time. On ASIO and WASAPI alike, your DAW can only use one. While its input is CABLE Output, your studio mic is not available inside it. That is fine — choose the mic in the Microphone / audio interface box at the top of this page instead. Your mic and the shared beat publish as two separate tracks, so both reach the room at once.
Part 4 — actually lay it down on the beat

Signal reaching the mixer is not the same as your DAW recording it. Hearing and capturing are two different things, and this is where most people get stuck.

1. Song mode, not Pattern mode. The switch is by the transport. In Pattern mode the take goes into a pattern instead of onto the timeline beside your beat.

2. ARM the insert. Click the small record-arm circle at the bottom of that mixer channel so it lights up. FL records armed inserts and nothing else — the most-missed step, and it fails completely silently.

3. Set where the file goes if prompted. It asks for a name and folder the first time.

4. Click Record, then Play. If asked what to record, choose “Audio, into the playlist”. Automation or Score record no audio at all and give you no warning.

5. Stop. The take appears in the playlist as an audio clip, on the beat.

Part 5 — fix crackling, glitching or stuttering

It is almost never the microphone. It is a sample-rate mismatch: the cable defaults to 44100 while this app runs at 48000.

Set 48000 Hz in all four — they are configured separately, and FL's is at the top of Options → Audio Settings, shipping on 44100:

· your interface's own control panel
· your DAW's audio settings
· the old sound window (Win+R → mmsys.cpl) → Playback tab → every CABLE … Input you use → Properties → Advanced
· the same window → Recording tab → every CABLE … Output → Properties → Advanced

Running two cables means eight places, not four — each end of each cable is set separately and they all default to 44100.

Still crackling? Raise your DAW's buffer length.

A cleaner way to get the take. A vocal pulled back through the room has network delay baked into it and will never sit tight to the grid, however carefully you nudge it. For anything you intend to keep, have the artist record on their phone and send you the file — it arrives clean, dry and perfectly in time, and none of the setup above is needed.
Count-in, and why takes land latetiming

When the host fires a count-in, this page counts 4 beats and then flashes REC. Punch record on the flash.

The count-in aligns when you both start, but the audio still travels phone → room → your machine, so the recording sits a little behind the grid. That delay is in the file — it is physics, not a setting.

Fix it once: record a clap on the first take, measure how late it lands, then nudge every take back by that amount.

For a sample-tight vocal, do not fight this. Have the artist record locally and send you the file.

Laybell — Online Studio Sessions