As far as I can tell, that's what the Utility plug in Ableton does. They route it through an aux track—no reason why that can't be done in DP.If you want non linear gain then you can use something like a dynamics plugin. If you want linear gain then that's the same as volume. So just run the track through two faders in sequence. Call the first one gain and its volume automation is now gain automation. Call the second one volume.
I use bite gain. If there's too much noise for that to be effective, I will run it through Ozone first.