HI Steve and all

Yes its true that in the end of the day you will finish up at16 anyway for the cd.
I guess the reason your cakewalk man wants 24 bit is to give him a bit more headroom for mixing (I wont go into that!).
However as has been stated by others above Cakewalk will convert incoming 16 bit to its project rate if that is set to 24, and makes a dam good job of it with floating point. (sorry here I go again)
I always have my Cakewalk projects set to 24 but normally import from Biab 16 bit
I have other music programs where I work at 24 bit like Albeton live 8, Magix music maker etc.
Also for me once I leave the midi domain I have to have 16 bit wav files to feed back to my Yamaha Clavinovia if I want to use the audio engine in there to play along to.

Importantly do what works for you and what your gear can do with less stress, BIAB has enough to do to run the complex program without having to do bit conversions at the same time. This sort of thing is best done in the DAW that is not concerned with all the musical arrangement side.
Just my thoughts
Mike


BIAB2021 UltraPlus,AsusN55S1Tbssd, W10/64,Akai EIEpro
Yamaha CVP405,SquireStrat, CoolsoftVMidSynth
Novatation Impulse61 Ctr kbd, Cwalk blab Kontakt

http://mikesmusic.byethost16.com/