Trying to get equal tension can be very difficult, especially with snap, crackle, and pop Remos. I always tune mine lug by lug, meaning I tap the head about a half inch off each lug and tune each lug to the other, sonically, rather than by worrying about how much tension is on each lug. Then I tune my batter to my resonant (I prefer the resonance of equal tensioned heads), by going around the drum in equal fractions of a turn while tapping in the middle with my finger, once I've completed my round.
It is my experience that what alot of drummers call "out of tune" or "sounds dead" is a choked head caused by poor tuning. Make sure all your lugs have equal tension, and make sure your batter and resonant are not more than a half turn from each other. Too much pitch variance between your batter and reso can make a drum sound horrible. I think alot of people will do this by tweaking their batter heads alot after an initial tuning, without adjusting their resos. Each drum shell has it's own preferences, too. If you still get a dead sound after doing everything above, tune both sides up a 1/4. If that sounds better, but not quite the resonance you want, tune up another 1/8 and keep doing it until you hit what you like. Most maple
shells have 3-4 "sweet spots" (where the tone causes the shell to vibrate harmoniously) in their tuning range, going from low to high, before they choke out completely. The only way to find them is to experiment.