Another technique in getting the killer drum sound is by using a trigger signal.  A trigger signal can be used to activate a pre-recorded drum sound (from a drum machine or sampler). A trigger signal is a microphone pickup of the drum which has been equalized or filtered to accent the attack of the drum.  The trigger signal isn't used in the mix but sent to the "trigger input" of a drum machine.

Capturing the attack of the drums as a separate signal will make a signal that can "turn on" the sound of a drum machine.  Let's use the snare drum as an example.  The final sound is a blend of the "real" drum sound picked up by the snare microphone and the pre-recorded sound from the drum machine.  The drum machine sound often adds body and attack to the real drum.  The drum machine sound is in time with the regular snare sound because it is triggered to play at the same time.

The ideal trigger signal would simply be a short spike that would occur when the drum was hit.  Any lingering of the sound and any leakage of other sounds (like cymbal leakage) could only cause a "mis-trigger" that activates the drum machine sound at the wrong time.  Thus the signal is purposely make to trigger - not to sound good by itself.

When we learned to place microphones on drums, we learned to place them at the edge of the skin to get maximum harmonics and tone out of the drum.  This was critical to the drum sound but not good for making trigger signals.

Very often it is desirable to equalize the trigger signal to remove leakage from other drums and cymbals leaking into the trigger microphone.  An extreme increase around the 3kHz frequency will accent the attack. Filtering any signal out above 3 kHz and below 200 Hz will dramatically reduce leakage from other drums and from cymbals.

It almost goes without saying that you choose what you consider to be a great drum sound (like that "awesome snare sound") to blend with a natural drum sound that normally would be recorded. You can use a little bit of the triggered drum sound to make a very natural sounding drum have a little more impact. The final decision on the blend, however, is yours.

Since it takes more microphones and tracks to provide both a trigger signal, a drum machine triggered sound and a regular drum pickup, you may only have enough inputs or tracks to do one or two of the drums in the kit.  But even helping out only the snare attack will noticeably improve the input of the overall drum sound.