I'm still thinking this might be a simple volume thing, as long as the OP hasn't commented my suggestion.

 It bothers me what kind of bounce/export settings could decrease the "loudness and punch", as described in the firts post? Either there are FX involved or not, in this case I think not. If there's problems with dithering, sample rate or bit depth, it's not reflected in punch or loudness. Whether the routing goes through Master Bus or directly to soundcard, it's all the same, as FX are excluded.

If you guys wanted to decrease the punch of a drum track using only export settings, what would you do? I don't have a single idea. 

Drums are mono, , except for maybe the overhead and room mics. 99% of all instruments recorded are mono. 

If you have open mic recording the kick drum, that is a mono track. If you have 2 mics recording the kick drum, you'll have 2 mono tracks for the kick drum. Drums are mainoy mono. Guitars are mono, bass guitar is mono. The only natural stereo sounds are from synths. most everyhting else is mono.

Most songs you hear are made up of mostly mono tracks. Vocals are mono, guitars are mono, drums are mono (excetp room / overhead mics)

CJ

All I said was you can bounce 1 drum track or all the drum tracks-it's your choice and it's your choice if you use mono or stereo.
Pretty straight forward
 
Just trying to help-I'll be quiet now

As has been said, if your pc can cope with the playback you don't "have" to bounce/freeze at all.  Personally though I find it easier to look at and to see what's happening when all tracks are audio / frozen. I never bother with the bouncing, just freeze the track with fx bin bypassed so that is is frozen without fx - this way I can still tweak/add/remove fx after the synth is frozen without having to unfreeze and I still have the ability to unfreeze and tweak the midi if I want to. .Downside of this is that unfreezing loses any per clip automation, so if you plan to do much of this better to drag the frozen audio across to a regular audio track before you do this.

I rarely bounce/freeze anything these days.

If I do feel the need, then I'll always freeze the synth (not the track)

Using this method, all my Fx are still live & available for tweaking, and freezing the synth is much, much quicker than doing a bounce.