The C1 Gate trick is great. Some additional notes:
Some plugins do weird things that don't show up on a meter. For example, inserting a meter after Waves Tune shows -inf. A plugin with self-noise(usually intentional analog noise) will show -90 to as much as -60.
With WavesTune, I've been able to bring the C1 up to -60 to -50 range and have the clips not consolidate. Anything lower than that and they get lumped into one clip
Even though the plugin shows no sign of generating self-noise with no audio clips present.
I've noticed some other plugins are similar.
If commit could behave like AudioSuite and adhere to clip definitions as an option... This would be really really helpful.