Cakewalk Professional 8? Do you mean Cakewalk Pro Audio 8.0?
There was for a short time a Cakewalk Professional, which was like the earlier versions and was basically a MIDI sequencer with the ability to place WAV events in the event window, and a Pro Audio version which allowed recording of audio tracks as well as MIDI tracks. The Professional version died out somewhere along the line. I think it was still alive at version 6.0. But I have a gap between 6.0 and 9.0 -- I didn't upgrade for a couple of years.
Maybe there's a Cakewalk version historian around who can straighten this out. I'm pretty sure the various lite versions over the years (Home Studio, Guitar Tracks, Gold Express...) are limited to eight audio tracks max...