Ableton’s Roar

Welcome to our guide to Ableton’s Roar distortion and saturation device. It is an absolute beast at processing and manipulating sound with it’s 3 stages of saturation, input and output drive, filters, feedback and modulation matrix.

We cover all you need to know with a detailed run down of how to use Roar, and some use cases and presets too.

See also: Pumping Techno Rumble Kick.

FOLLOW US FOR FREE SAMPLES, RACKS AND TUTORIALS…

---

Video on Ableton’s Roar

There’s a video tutorial and run down of Roar on our Youtube channel…. Please subscribe to the youtube if you haven’t yet: youtube.com/@studiobrootle 

---

What Is Ableton’s Roar?

Ableton’s Roar is three different saturation units in one, with different routing options. One of which for example which is that can be used for frequency splitting – distorting the lows, mids and high frequencies separately. It has drive before and after the saturation units, and feedback too, as well as a modulation matrix.

What Roar’s Controls Do

Input Drive And Routing

Firstly the Drive and Tone knobs: these are to set the volume the signal is going in and to add distortion from the start. The Tone knob is an EQ for this. The light to the top right of the drive knob lights up when it’s driving the signal. This seems simple but it is great for picking out a frequency to distort and you can really shape a sound.

The slider below the Tone knob controls is the frequency of the low shelf.

The small square Color Compensation know is off when yellow and blue when on. It helps to reduce too much distortion. It basically cuts what you’re boosting.

The key here is to tweak these settings until you get a sound you like, as you’re shaping the sound before it even hits the Saturation stages.

The routing mode drop down changes how the signal goes through the unit and it’s 3 separate distortion stages. Single is just one Stage, Serial is 2 (one after the other), Parallel is 2 separate independent distortions, Multiband is the same as Parallel but 3 stages, and they are split by frequency to low, mid and high. Mid Side is 2 stages, one for the center of the stereo field, and one for the stereo (so you can leave the center undistorted and distort just the far left and right signals for example). Feedback is so you can distort the feedback separately, which can lead to crazy tones. I love this one to be honest.

The Blend control under it sets the bands between the stages.

---

Saturation Stages

The middle section of the unit contains the Saturation Stages, which is how the distortion is used.

Here you have the 1,2, or 3 distortion units (which interact differently depending on the routing you set). Each one is similar.

You have Amount, Bias and Frequency as the main controls…

Amount is the distortion amount/mix. Bias moves the distortion from being symmetrical, I like it as you are basically moving the distortion slightly off the sweet spot, then you can modulate it to move through the sweet spot. Run a sound through it. And change the bias and you’ll see and hear what I mean, and then add an LFO to it. Frequency is the filter cut off. Clicking ‘pre‘ next to it means the filter acts before the distortion, instead of after.

Beneath the Amount you have the Shaper type selections drop down and Level (which is the post-shaper volume).

These are the shaper types: Soft Sine, Digital Clip, Bit Crusher, Diode Clipper, Tube Preamp, Half Wave Rectifier, Full Wave Rectifier, Polynomial, Fractal, Tri Fold, Noise Injection, Shards.

Also you can switch off the shaper by clicking the orange square above the Shaper type drop down. This way you get Roar’s the other drives, filter and feedback etc without any Shaper.

The names indicate what they do, but you also see their shape when you select them, so you know what they’re doing to the sound.

The filter is fairly self explanatory except the Comb and Resampling types: put these on and turn down the cut off a bit and you’ll see and hear what they do – they add some harmonic distortion at the cutoff, both in different ways.

---

The Modulation Matrix

Roar has Modulation Matrix very much like Wavetable’s. It has 4 mod sources: 2 LFOs, and Envelope Follower (note this is not an ADSR style envelope, but it traces the audio that comes like gate does in and you can generate an envelope from that). It has a noise generator that has various different types of noise: select them and you can see the difference in output.

---

Feedback Section

The feedback section is great, you can take the signal and re-distort it in a number of ways leading to screaming feedback tones.

There are 5 modes: The Note mode lets your tune the frequency of the feedback which is amazing for drones and tuning the distortion harmonically. The other 4 modes are the types of delays.

The Amount knob is the amount of feedback obviously – be careful as it can scream!

Below it are 2 buttons to invert the phase of the signal that is feedback, which can lead to different feedback effects. And then the Gate which will cut feedback slowly if the input signal stops so you don’t get infinite feedback loops

The bottom 2 sliders in the feedback unit are a bandpass filter in the feedback unit and they control the frequency and width of the filter.

---

The Output Section

The Compress button is how much the signal is compressed. The light to the top right shows when it’s working so you can set it to taste. The SC HPF button below it high passes the signal the compressor uses (use this if it goes nuts when there’s too much bass in the signal!). The Output know can be used for more distortion, it has a light at the top right as well so you can visually monitor the over-driving.

Then there’s a Dry/wet knob for the whole unit.

This section then feeds into the feedback section.

---