Hipskind,
I'm glad to help. I've been reading recording forums for years now and it's places like this that have helped me immensely. As for your room having too much absorbtion, It's quite possible that this is contributing to your lack of a quality snare drum sound. I made the same mistake myself when I built my jam room. I converted the 3rd stall of my garage into a small studio and treated the entire thing in fibrous sound board from Home Depot. It turned out to be way too dead. over time I've "livened" it up using pine boards. Pine is a good reflective source but still warm.
Back then the floor was covered in rugs which was further deadening my sound. Now days I only use a small rug, only big enough for my throne, kick, and hi-hat stand. This allows all my drums, especially snare, to sound more lively in the mix.
As for the API pre, I have never used one but would love to. I'm sure they are killer. Many many pro recording have been made with these. The new BFD acoustic drum module from FXpansion was tracked using API's and the sound is really good.
Despite not having first hand experience with the API pre's I will say this about pre's in general. They make a huge difference....I mean huge! Don't listen to people who say otherwise. I was using a Mackie 1604 board for years and was told that the preamps were good so I didn't think they were limiting my sound in any way. I was wrong. When I switched to the JLM TMP-8 I was blown away by the improvement in my sound, instantly...with no other changes to my other gear. good pre-amps help you transition from that typical small room crappy sound (muddy, woofy, inarticulate) to more of that spacious and dynamic sound that we all hear on the radio and want for our own recordings. Now days I only use my Mackie board for monitoring but it isn't in the signal path between my mics and recorder. it just adds to much low end and isn't very 3 dimensional.
If you could do 5 things that will make a dramatic improvement I'd say do these first:
1. get some good pre-amps (API's, JLM audio, focusrite Red5, Universal Audio, Neve, all make pre's in the $2k range that will make a huge difference. Personally I think the JLM TMP-8 is the best bang for your buck. It costs about $1,850 for 8 preamps. that's less than $250 per pre and they sound excellent. You can mic your entire kit. Check out jlmaudio.com. Joe Malone, the owner, builds custom mods of Neve consoles, API pres etc. and really knows his stuff. He will also chat with you personally by email. They are based in Australia so it takes about a week to a week and a half to get your order but it's worth it.)
2. remove some of the deadening in your room and add diffusion
3. use 1 overhead or rear mic, condenser, in omni mode vs. 2 spaced cardioids for overheads. go for more of a mono sound in a small room and keep your mic(s) lower to the ground as opposed to up high. the OMNI mode makes for a much better cymball sound and adds way more ambiance to your mix than cardioids. They also do not add low end frequency to your mix due to proximity effect.
4. run your final stereo drum mix back through the same preamps again after you've done all of your EQ and signal processing to liven it up...this is a huge key! A little compression here will also make your drums sound punchy.
5. tune your snare drum tighter than you might normally like to hear it. this will result in less low frequency being thrown around in your room. It might sound a little weird to your ears at first but, when you play back your recording it will sound fine. Also, don't deaden that snare too much with muffling or rings or things like that. those deadringers (small plastic ring 14 inches in diamter and about 1 1/2" wide) sound cool but don't record well in a small room. what I do is to take a deadringer and cut it so that it's only about 2-4 inches long and lay it on my snare head up next to the rim. this deadens the wild ass transients just slightly but otherwise leaves that open snare sound in tact. I've also had better luck with metal snares than wood in a small room.
Have fun.
