Newbie-ish Question: "Harmonic" Distortion

[The Chase]

What do people mean when they say harmonic distortion, and what makes a distortion particularly harmonic?

[vurt]

http://www.its.bldrdoc.gov/fs-1037/dir-037/_5509.htm

http://members.aol.com/sbench102/thd.html

http://www.powerfactorinc.com/9power_pr ... ortion.htm

plus its a label

[kylen]

In addition to the cool links vurt gave you I like this one:
http://www.butleraudio.com/tubesvstrans2.html

This is from part2 even though the whole article is interesting. Go to the bottom of the page where it discusses "Musical Harmonics" and see if that makes any sense. Even though the article is analogish you'll find varying degrees of harmonic distortion in both analog (usually can't help it) and digital (usually have to add it on purpose).

[shamann]

Further to your link pile, here's my favourite on the subject:

http://www.geofex.com/effxfaq/distn101.htm