maybe you should bring other levels down so the kick will stand out more and bring the mix fader up...

I swear everytime I ask a question I figure it out myself the same day. I'm still learning how things work. I wasnt really paying attention to clipping levels. I have a c1 compressor so I kept that on just to see when I was clipping. I put it at the end of my list of compressor, eq, effects then I put the c1 compressor, boosted it up as high as it'd go without clipping then put an eq after it and boosted the eq, now I can make it so much louder...one less barrier to tackle now.

Hey,
What other tracks do you have in the bottom end? You could filter out anything below, say, 100Hz on some other tracks that tend to have higher frequencies as they don't tend to need anything below 100. That might give the kick a little room to breath in the mix. Then try boosting your kick drum around 64Hz (I like that area), I find that it gives the kick drum some real "kick". I also like to layer my kick drums. Get another kick timbre to play the exact same thing as the first and layer the two together. It might give the kick a fuller sound.
Regards,
pAndAmOnkEY

Thanks i'll give that kick layering a try. I just went through a bunch of my tracks, the ones that were the highest quality were the ones with less effects and junk through them. Things are much smoother now that i've taken the uneeded garbage out and minimized my eqing.

A slight nudge at 64hz and a bit of a shove at around 4k and the kick becomes a kick...keep them narrow if you have that kind of control....

Just a suggestion for you try running a limiter
after your compressor and don't hit the ratio tooo hard on your compressor it will bring your kick out and guaranteed you can put it anywhere you want it as far as how it sounds well....
that is all in how you tracked it!

I forgot to mention the kicks i'm trying to get right are hip hop/ rap kicks. The electronic types I don't have a problem with. I don't want something to deep but i'm trying to make it feel wide. Ive tried using reverb but I can't seem to cut off the verb proberly for it to sound right. Maybe I'm not using the right effects.

I was thinking along the same lines as DaveDog. What does your EQ look like now? Personally I would cut a bit between 200 & 2k and see what that gets you. I personally try cutting frequencies before boosting them because sometimes it's just a matter of finding an overpowering frequency and pulling it under control rather than boosting to overpower.

Is you're worried about losing that kick punch, try finding it by finding it between both teh Kick & Bass.

Just remember to let each instrument have its own frequency range that way your mix will sound more alive and less like audio stew.