Kick drum keeps overpowering every mix

[Uncle E]

I'm definitely not there yet, it will indeed take a while.
But if my room doesn't work in my favor, is it then still possible to develop good mixes?

Don't do it. It's possible but you're asking for a world of heartache. Much easier to just save up $300, buy Slate VSX Essentials, and be done with it.

[Hedge12]

Decent headphones would give a useful "second opinion" from monitors as well as making it easier to mix at night without disturbing people!

Be aware though that not all high-quality studio headphones have the same characteristics, some are bassier or brighter than others. (But they are in general more neutral with a smoother frequency spectrum than consumer headphones. This is a good thing.)

The volume-level dependence does sound like a room issue. Probably there are some bass or mids frequencies that are more resonant. Try playing around with frequency sweeps to see if you can find them; moving a bookcase/sofa or changing the distance between speakers and wall could make a difference. You can calculate what distance corresponds to what frequencies using the speed of sound!

The length of a kick sample should be related to how you use it in the arrangement. Long bassy kicks leave less room for other bass instruments.

Re: sidechain compression, the ratio matters less than you'd think because it interacts with the input level of the sidechain. 2:1 and 4:1 could be made to act the same by fiddling with gains and thresholds. (This is not the case with regular compression.) That said, "maximum" is probably too much unless you are going for a choppy, dramatic effect. With a low ratio and deep threshold the compressed signal will follow the dynamics of the key signal in a more detailed way; that might help especially if you have more than one kick of different lengths being used.

Do you think it's possible to mix a track in my current room while using a reference track?

For example, I use a professional track and match my elements (i.e., kick, bass, etc.) to that reference track - using my monitors. Would this than translate to a good mix on my consumer headphones (the wireless Sennheiser)?

Would this be a good idea to learn how to mix in my current environment?

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