To be able to gate your breath or something that is noise in your vocal recording.
Mostly without the need for chopping, you can use Maximus.
You can turn off all bands in the Maximus, and only let Master Channel keep working for you.
To be able to gate you need to set the proper Envelope in Maximus:
The Cut you see in this Maximus Envelope. That is set to -18dB and is more like a cut of the sounds that go below -18dB. You can set it shorter tho, and even chop the sound more precisely at certain level.
Using the shoe Snap to Grid can make you make detailed work to the Envelope:
In more proper Noise Gate, you really need to set the Attack and the Release
The faster the Attack the faster it finds the proper value to attack. Making foreseen the recording faster, and trying to hit a lock on gate with fast find. Like for example if your vocals are beginning low and rising it will start to attack the vocals. But higher attack it will wait.
With Release, you might want to set it higher than the original default preset of Maximus.
But having higher release is more proper to a Noise Gate since it will most likely not stop your cuts if they aren’t high enough. Making a deeper removal of Noise.
Tho sustain is also used, but are not the most important thing in doing Noise Gating, but you have to mostly try yourself and see how it works. Sometimes default value is the best, but Sustain will most likely also work on nearly the same method as Release but are upkeeping the work of Release.
You can also use different envelopes and even Noise Gating at a certain height your sound at higher than 10kHz perhaps like in this choosing the proper Bands:
Setting your bands of high frequencies will enforce its use noise gating of the proper value.
In Maximus mostly LOW CUT is the reason for its un-proper processing, remember always to turn it off.
If you have to high noise gating, and still struggle to not remove too much of your vocals or high-frequency sounds, to nearly 50% rather than 100% you can then set your Maximus to only do 50% processing:
Tho this option is rather making your sound worse but it can be optional for a very different solution that isn’t any way possible.
Setting your vocals with a 50% lower value of high frequencies above 10kHz might be a better solution than 100%. But remember, your vocals need these frequencies.
Tip: If you are doing mastering your vocals, set rather a Fruity Limiter with Default Preset with Gain to achieve higher vocal levels. Just remember not to set it to higher level than the limit. One peak limit is enough for the height of your vocal. Then you can use this tutorial Noise Gating easier since often low-value dB vocals will most likely give you a headache on how to do this.
