A question regarding outboard gear...

I've never used outboard gear before, so this is new to me.  How do I hook up a gate to the VS-700?  It's very tedious to cut out noise between guitar hits or snare drums, so I thought I'd use a noise gate going in.  I have the Drawmer DS404 and the manual says to plug it into the "Insert" on the board (male/female XLR cables to 1/4" TRS).  Where do I plug this in? 

Thanks...

Placing it right before the V700R inputs you want to gate will work best. Threshold and release are the  two things you'll have to niggle into a natural sounding open and close in relation to the noise.
 

Honnestly gating the noisy recorded signal with plugins is the safest way to go I think.
 
1. You'll be sure you don't crew your take by misadjusting the hardware gate during recording, plugins allows to work non-destructively, while hardware add noise and are permanent if used during tracking.
 
2. If you have nothing else, use the sonitus gate included with sonar, great user interface and work awesome
 
If you absolutely want to use it while tracking, I would avoid using a mic plugged in the gate and then to the VS mic pres. The vs pres will applify the noise from the mic and from the gate circuit. Gates are designed to be quiet when used with line level (if you connect a guitar pre in it and then to the vs pre would be alright) but if the vs pres amplify the device's internal white noise by let's say 40db, the noise gate may loose its purpose wich is to remove noise...
 
The method Jeff described for external insert is spot on. Used it on some occasions and it work very nicely. The only thing is you have to record the result in real time (no fast bounce) so it's more time consuming.
 
 

Gating is no biggy especially if you just use a plug to alleviate any pain due to your setup. If using external gear is an issue, then you probably haven't got a patch bay yet. It makes things a whole lot easier when you need to do things easily external to the 'box'.
 
Cheers.