gs: it's ok if you resell my info. LOL! It's provided in hopes of helping and given with love. :)
Laptop references: She can't go by that. I know you know that...she has to know it as well. Here's an idea. Give a listen to something on her laptop that she thinks sounds good. At least you can judge for yourself if it is indeed good or not. It helps when you can hear what others hear as it can also show you what you could be missing that is allowing them to like what they like. It's not going to fix anything totally, but it can help at times. It's rare you'll make everything sound right through speakers like those. Even ear buds can sometimes suffer unless the unit they are plugged into has bass boost or something. I mean granted, we want to get things sounding as good as we can on every system possible....but we also don't want to stress because 1/4 inch ear buds or 2 inch lappy speakers may not sound right. If you were to keep mixing for every place...you'll be here forever. However, this is where mastering comes in and can make a huge difference.
When I master something, I keep everything in mind and also try to give you a mix that will translate without distortion or too much low end on everything. The other side of the coin is this....and what I'll say here is something that may be an epiphany for you and others. No matter what you do....no matter what I do, no matter what Bob Ludwig or Mutt Lange would do, the second someone touches a piece of music (that isn't an engineer) they reach for their eq and ruin it with excessive eq. Seriously....I see it so often, it almost makes me not want to care anymore because the majority of common folks are so clueless. They either jack up the lows or raise EVERY frequency band just to get more volume. So at the end of the day, you could release something as great as a Doobie Brothers album...and still have someone jack it beyond recognition. Do the best you can, don't try for perfection on every system....and just keep that happy medium in mind while knowing you have done the best you could do.
As for the new mix, that's the right idea in my opinion. You can turn the bass guitar up a little more as I can no longer hear it as well consistently. I sort of feel it, but it's not as audible. Two things could be the cause. Do you know which two they may be?
1. Fader level could come up a bit and may be the fix
2. Side chaining could be removing the bass more than it should and may not be keeping it consistent
You know my feelings on side-chaining. I'm totally against it other than in certain situations when you have busy mixes, dance material, hip hop, but just about never on rock. Let me ask you a question. Why did you side-chain? See, I need to grill you on this stuff because I have quite a few students that do things "just because" or because they read about them. In this field bro, you should (at least in my opinion you should) always justify a means as to why you do something. Sure, sometimes we experiment. But, when compressors are shared to where instruments trade off like in a side-chaining situation, you do more harm than good unless you have a reason to add something like that.
In my opinion, you have a VERY healthy bass tone. If your eq fails on the kick and you are not happy with it, you can always replace it. I don't know if you have Drumagog or not, but you can actually use a killer kick from session drummer if need be. In case you're unsure how to do this...
Run audio snap on the kick track. Hi-lite the track, snap it up then "copy as midi" and paste it to a blank midi track using midi note number 35 or 36, (make sure your time line is completely rewound) fly in Session drummer on an audio track, set the midi out to SD3, pick the kick you want and bang...mix in the amount you want with the real one. This not only helps fix any problems you *may* have, it allows you a totally new canvas of eq's to work on for the kick. New thrust freq's and beater attack due to the sample being different than the original kick.
Don't ever feel like changing a sound is cheating. Sometimes the sound we record just isn't good. I'm not saying that's the case with your kick...but sometimes a sound just doesn't work. I think you have the right idea with the new mix as the kick has a bit more "ooomph" to it. I'd add a little snap to it....you know, some beater attack. Run your high end gain on the kick up all the way and sweep the freq until you hear some snap. Then of course back the gain down and experiment with the Q to see how things tighten up, then compress it so it's consistent. (the guy doesn't seem to *kick* it hard consistently) Or...like I said, run a Session Drummer kick along with your kick and hybrid....it makes for a really cool sound for added reinforcement. :)
Keep at it brother...it's getting there. Keep in mind, I'm not totally annihilating the mix because I don't see a need to. Blatant issues....I'll tell you about. Anything that may be subjective (which most of this is) I try to keep out unless I feel something is worth expressing. So take what I say with a grain of salt. :) Good luck!
-Danny