It sounds like you might be experiencing a MIDI routing problem. 

Are you sure there are no other tracks routed into the VEP or VIP instance overriding whatever track you are working with?

I assume you are using a piano roll veiw?  Zoom the verticle veiw all the way out and make sure there are no little MIDI notes or events somewhere that you didn't notice before that could be keyswitching.

What happens if you load up a template without staccatos?

In VIP are the articulations set to keyswitches or do you maybe have a speed matrix loaded?  do the staccs happen during fast passages?  Maybe a CC controler stuck in the wrong position?

Thanks Jason! I will follow up on your suggestions. One thing I do a lot is move things around from instrument to instrument. I might for example copy/cut/paste, or physically move, a viola passage and put it on the second violins. I notice that when I do that, the midi channel listed cin Sonar's event list will have the wrong channel, in this case the viola channel instead of the sceond violin channel. I have always assumed this did not matter; there doesn't seem to be any quick way to change it, other than changing each note individually.

I will go on a search foe any possible events on other channels that could be interfering. I'll let you know how it goes.

Still struggling with this one. I'm going to set aside some time and revisit the learning videos here. I had things working well, but then I went from Sonar to Reaper, then back to Sonar, in the process switching from Sonar Producer to Studio. Something is different but I can't figure out what it is.

Unchecking "zero controllers" was a good tip, but it didn't work. I'm just going to finish my current project, which is almost done, then really sit down and try to figure this out.

A little progress to report. I have bassoons working. I loaded them and manually changed them to sustained. This is holding up. However, when I did the same with the horns, it didn't work. They change back to staccato. I did try putting in keyswitches, but it ignored them. I did also uncheck "zero controllers." I also tried the keyswitch an ocatve higher and an octave lower, that didn't help.

It could be your keyswitches are in the wrong octave; differnet DAW number things differently.

With VI open, look to see what keys are depressing in the virtual keyboard when you send the keyswitch.

Also, can you manually keyswitch the articulations on your keyboard?

@Bill said:

It could be your keyswitches are in the wrong octave; differnet DAW number things differently.

With VI open, look to see what keys are depressing in the virtual keyboard when you send the keyswitch.

Hi Bill, I put keyswitches in as actual notes. My keyboard is a short one, only goes down to Great C, and no octave controls on it (very simple midi keyboard). So I can't put them in on the fly.

@jasensmith said:

Also, can you manually keyswitch the articulations on your keyboard?

See above reply.

Well, I have added in some other instruments, specifically Bass PZ and Cellos, and was able to manually set the articulation on the VI Player. So I now have those, plus Timpani and Bassoon. but those pesky horns are still misbehaving. The others are working, even with no keyswitching, just manual setting of the patch.

I figured this out awhile back, thought I'd share it: By setting the Y axis to ketswitch, the problem went away.