There is a guy who sells mixing courses, and he describes how he does his Vocal automation:
STEP 1) Before you start mixing, apply volume automation to the lead vocal channel. Turn up the quiet words, turn down the loud ones. The level of consistency you want to aim for depends on the genre. For Pop music, I often spend an hour doing this alone.
STEP 2) Create a new stereo aux/buss channel.
STEP 3) Change the output of the lead vocal channel to this new aux/buss.
STEP 4) Do all your processing there (compression EQ etc.) instead of directly on the lead vocal channel.
My question is, Can the same thing be done by just adding a gain plugin first, automate the region and continue with the rest of the processing directly on the Vocal channel?