I'm going to be recording drums in a couple of days for the first time in my life with crappy (and probably not very appropriate) equipment. What I'm looking for is software- meaning plug-ins, equalizers, triggers, etc. -to help me get as decent a drum sound as possible with crappy hardware. Now I'm well aware that this will not sound like it was done in a pro studio, however any improvement will help. Specific problems I'm expecting and want to tackle include the cymbals being too loud, fluctuations in snare drum volume (basically trying to even out the volume of all the snare hits on the recording) and bass drum definition. I'll be glad to hear your tips on how to achieve these things with software as well as things such as mic placement (working with a single mic here, that's is why it's so problematic), hell, any tips are welcome. Thanks in advance.

What kind of mic are you using? I'm using one mic myself its a Shure mic and I place it about 2 feet above my 2 toms with a t-shirt over it. The sound comes out clear but not as crisp as I'd like it to be. I also mic up the bass drum through a small guitar amp and place it close to the recording mic. I'm still experimenting with different methods.

With only one microphone it will be virtually impossible to get an acceptable drum sound.

Some of the problems you list are fixed very simply. If the cymbals are too loud, play them softer. If the snare drum is not even in volume, play it more evenly. If the bass drum isn't defined enough, hit it harder. If you aren't micing the drums individually, thats the best you can get.

It's important to make sure that the drums are tuned very well for this kind of recording. Here is a great link for drum tuning: http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/

Once the drums themselves sound good, then experiment with the mic placement to get a good balance.

Doing any kind of EQ or processing after the fact will be very difficult, and will require a lot of experimentation. I would definitely try parallel compression to see if that helps even anything out.

Thanks for the input dudes, the drum tuning site looks awesome and very useful. The thing is with parallel compression, as good as it sounds, that I don't know what kind of curve to use on the second (heavily compressed) track.

Also Night_Desecrate, your method is exactly the kind of stuff I'm after, punk rock ingenuity. I'm definitely going to be trying that out. As for my mic, it's a no-name, however it captures sound somewhat decently.