It’s been a while since I had the need, but today I wanted to use Padshop for some MPE work. I recall last time I tried this was was a few years ago, and the pitchbend never worked properly - at which point I’d given up.
“Surely it’s fixed by now”, I thought…
Nope. The best I can get (with ‘Use for tuning’ switched on) is a one-octave bend for a two-octave sweep down my Seaboard’s keys. If I switch off ‘Use for tuning’ I get no pitchbend at all. Yes, I’m using the MPE presets.
A quick test with Retrologue shows it to be the same. A 'net search shows others having similar problems from years ago.
Am I doing something dumb, or have Steinberg really not fixed this problem after all this time?
Thanks, but no it doesn’t help.
Have you changed the settings to use Tuning for pitch bend in the MPE device setup of Studio Setup?
Yes, as mentioned in my first post above. When I use that option I get one octave of bend for two octaves of keyboard sweep. Without ‘Use for tuning’ selected I hear no discernable bend at all.
The bottom line here is that my other synths (both hardware and software) work perfectly well (and don’t require ‘Use for tuning’, whatever that is), and only Steinberg’s own synths refuse to function properly.
I think the problem is that that the pitchbend range in Padshop (and Retrologue) is -48 to +24 instead of -48 to +48
See this quote:
I certainly can imagine that’s part of it, but it seems to make no difference to MPE pitchbend, regardless of what I set there.
Steinberg’s synths support Note Expression but not MPE. That means the MPE data needs to be transformed into Note Expression. “Tuning” seems to be NE’s equivalent to pitch bend.
Furthermore, the Polyphonic Mode must be enabled in Padshop (cog wheel menu).
And yet they provide collections of presets labelled as ‘MPE’?
Am I naive in thinking that an ‘MPE’ preset should work properly from an MPE controller?
I’ve given it another run this morning. I can’t even get back to where I was hearing a half-octave bend - maybe I dreamed this. The most I can get is a 2-semitone bend over a 4-octave sweep. Neither the ‘Use for tuning’ option, or Padshop’s pitch bend range, makes any difference.
I give in.
Surely I’m not the only player out here that would like to use an MPE controller with Steinberg’s bundled synths? Or has everyone else given up trying too?
I’m prepared to believe that I’m doing something wrong, but I seem to manage fine with other hardware/software. Maybe also I could make changes to my Seaboard options to help, but I’m not going to do that; they work fine with everything else, and I don’t want to break that - and changing them is a faff that I won’t detail here.
No, noooooo … don’t give in! 
If I might make one suggestion, perhaps changing the topic to “Issue with MPE controllers and HALion-based synths” would get more attention?
Thanks for the suggestion, but life is too short. I don’t think that Steinberg take anything seriously here. I reported this problem literally years ago and nothing has been done. I don’t expect much to change.
Dare I ask … did you log a support ticket via your MySteinberg account?
If I’m the only person in the world concerned about this I see no point. Sorry to seem so negative, but I have a thousand other things I should be doing.