just record raw sound as you are, then drop all the tracks in the multitrack software. from there you will be able to do all the eq, and effects you could ever want, then also work on the panning and volumes like you said earlier. once you click 'save as mixdown' you will get a file with all the settings present. i guess you could apply effects as you record, but i would beware, you wouldn't be able to reverse whatever you did after-the-fact. i just like to sit down the next day and do all my sound-engineering, rather than try to get it down at the same time as recording... hope this helps!

Thanks John, it will definitely help, but I was just wondering which program to use; they say here SONAR is good. Would it allow me to do what you said? (save tracks altogether to a mixdown/single WAV file?). when using sound forge, I always got the tracks and then applied effects to them, but as you said, AFTER the actual recording. Regarding soundboards, I´ve been told that getting a semi-professional one would increase the sound quality of takes. I´ve got an onboard one, but I get the feeling that a good would surely solve some problems of sound fidelity and performance.

Thanks a lot