Thin drums? Compress a copy.

When drums sound thin, the instinct is to compress them harder. That flattens the hits you actually want.

Compress a copy instead. Smash a duplicate of the drum bus and blend it in under the dry kit. The dry kit keeps the sharp hits; the smashed copy brings up the room and the sustain between them.

Same loudness before and after (-19.7 LUFS): +3.2 dB more body, measured as the typical level between hits relative to the hits themselves.

A detail we found while measuring: with a very fast attack, each hit's first millisecond gets through even under heavy compression, so the peak-to-average number can go up. That's why we measured body, not punch, for this one.

Next: Small guitars? Check your pans first.