Please Feedback my 20 second mixing test!

[Skywolfen]

I'm doing this metal song at home in cubase; https://youtu.be/p5SUoMvl-ss


I lined the guitars with active humbuc mics, drums are computer made.

I used guitar rig 5 for dist and download this preset from here; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGQcLB00oe8 + little tweaking


So I'm wondering;

1.How can I pan my guitars? If I pan lead and rhythm to 100% L and R it sounds very empty. What is the professional way of panning? Sounds mono now.

2.How can I get a good sound with my drums? I use groove agent one, standard comes with cubase. What should I use instead/make it sound better?

3.What can I do to improve my mixing?

4.what exactly is "mastering"? Can I do this from home?

 

[JeffroMixesYou]

A good mix is about a million tiny things, so it's pretty tough to answer overally general questions. But to address the L/R panning...I am all about hard panning rhythm guitars and panning lead dead center. You can always pan short delays/verbs to the other channel to make this less extreme (guitar panned hard left has some short verbs/delays that are panned hard right), etc. etc.
If there are two rhythm distorted guitars, I don't want them in the center channel fucking with my kick/snare/bass combo.