What is a Voice-Stealing Gate and why would you want one?

Question

I understand that a Voice-Stealing Gate is one that dips to -1 breifly before going up to 1. Voice-Stealing is mentioned several times in Kyma X Explained but it doesn't really explain why you would want a VSG.

A quick search of the interwebs describes voice-stealing only in the context of when a synth runs out of polyphony and steals oscillators for new notes.

Answer 1

I understand the VSG as a kind of alignment signal.  The dip to -1 for 5ms serves as a signal to any Sounds that are aware of that signal that they have 5 ms to quickly fade the amplitude to zero before the actual trigger On. For example, in an ADSR or the AD of a Sample player... It helps to get things nice and click free, so gates don't interrupt abruptly (which is what can cause clicks).

Answer 2

Another reason why you would want the negative pulse at the start of the gate is so that by inverting it (multiply by minus one) you will get a thin pulse trigger instead of a wide gate. This could be used to trigger ramps (or other parramitors) that needed to continue un effected when the note off comes along. You may also need to get a sample (for example) started before opening the ADSR (which would be fed by the un inverted gate). If you don't want the negatinve pulse or it is getting in the way, you just need to get the ABS olute value of the gate.