Steinberg's Cubase has quietly cleaned up one of its more annoying MPE bugs. The Cubase 15.0.10 maintenance update, released earlier this year, resolves an issue where VST instruments running in MPE mode could produce hanging notes — stuck tones that wouldn't release even after a key was lifted. For anyone tracking expressive performances with a Seaboard, Osmose, or LinnStrument, that's a small fix with an outsized impact on usability.

A Steady, If Slow, MPE Roadmap

Cubase has supported MIDI Polyphonic Expression since the Note Expression framework was extended to handle per-note pitch bend, timbre (CC74), and pressure back in version 9.5. The official Cubase documentation walks through which MPE input devices are supported and how incoming per-note data maps onto Steinberg's Note Expression lanes.

That said, Steinberg's approach has always been more conservative than dedicated MPE-first DAWs. Recording MPE data into Cubase works reliably once an input device is configured correctly, but editing that data after the fact remains limited compared to what's now standard elsewhere. On the Steinberg forums, users have been requesting more flexible MPE editing views for years — the ability to draw, scale, and reshape expression curves directly in the Key Editor rather than working through separate Note Expression panels.

Why This Matters for MPE Players

Hanging notes are a workflow killer. For a composer layering polyphonic aftertouch on a string patch or a sound designer riding per-note timbre on a pad, a single stuck note during a take can force a full re-record. The fact that Steinberg singled this out in a dot release suggests MPE reliability is getting real attention inside Cubase's QA process, even if flashier expression-editing features are still on the wishlist.

It's also a reminder that MPE support isn't a single feature you either have or don't — it's a stack of details: input device recognition, per-note data recording, playback accuracy, and editing ergonomics. A DAW can nail the first three and still frustrate users on the fourth, which appears to be exactly where Cubase sits today.

How Cubase Compares

Cubase's MPE implementation is functional but editor-first DAWs built around MPE from the ground up — Bitwig Studio chief among them — still offer more direct manipulation of per-note curves. Cubase's strength has always been its Note Expression system's precision for fixed-pitch instruments and its deep VST3 integration; MPE support feels layered on rather than native, which tracks with its release history.

For users who record MPE performances and then do most of their sound-shaping inside a synth's own MPE-aware engine (Pigments, Equator2, or similar), Cubase's current implementation is perfectly workable. For those who want to sculpt expression curves extensively after the fact inside the DAW timeline, the gap with newer competitors is still noticeable.

What to Watch For

Steinberg hasn't announced a dedicated MPE editing overhaul, but the pattern of incremental fixes across the Cubase 15 point releases suggests the team is chipping away at the backlog of MPE-related requests. If you're on an older Cubase build and working with MPE hardware, updating to 15.0.10 or later is worth doing simply to avoid the hanging-note issue — check the Cubase release notes for the full changelog before updating a production system.

In the meantime, players who need heavier MPE editing muscle continue to route around the limitation by tracking in Cubase and finishing expression work inside their instrument of choice, or by using a second DAW purely for MPE-heavy passages. It's not an elegant solution, but it works — and it's a good illustration of how uneven MPE support still is across the DAW landscape in 2026, even among tools that have technically supported it for years.