All those things Uncle Dutch mentioned are things an engineer might try (along with parallel, or "New York" compression) when recording real/acoustic drums (as well as gating, if the drum has a funky "after-taste" sound to it); they also work fine with samples or drum machine sounds. I was kind of blown-away the first time I processed a drum machine snare with compression; I figured it would be overkill or destructive, the drum sample itself surely having been compressed already. But when you play in a sound with a pad, you are adding some (admittedly a tiny bit) of that human element that is both gratifying, as well as inconsistency-inducing. So compressing a live input sample can have the same effect it has on an acoustic drum-- awesome, if not overused.
GJ