Ableton's own tutorial channel walks through the foundational controls of Roar, Live 12's coloring and saturation device, using a simple triangle wave from Operator as the source signal. The demonstration covers how increasing drive pushes more signal into the shaper, and how the shaper level and wave shaping amount interact to take a sound from subtle warmth to heavy distortion.
Roar includes a wide range of shaper types, from bit crusher to polynomial and fractal modes, each producing a distinct character. Adjusting the bias introduces a DC offset that creates asymmetrical clipping, shifting how the distortion sits sonically.
The built-in filter can be placed before or after the shaper, which changes the character of the result significantly. Filter types go well beyond standard options, including comb and resampling modes that open up more textural possibilities.