I like how when developers report the compression ratios of lossless codecs the percent they use is the larger looking number (the compressed file is X% the size of the original file) instead of the smaller number (the file was compressed X%!)

I know when I think about compression I'd rather know the latter. Yes I know the math is easy to get from one to the other! (100% - the % they give = the % compressed)

Since I'm new to the lossless world, when I look at the % reported my mind automatically thinks that the file was compressed by that reported %. I have to retrain myself.

I just though this observation would be interesting.

Not all of them!

I prefer percentage of original size, myself. Been so long since I used anything but winrar, but winrar at least also reports percentage of original size.

I prefer to know the percent of original as well. When i hear "40% smaller," i want that to mean i can fit 40% more songs in the same space. Put it this way: It is the improvement on the INITIAL size that seems relevant, not the loss in space if i were to uncompress.

Hmm. I think that by your 40% example you actually agree with the original poster.

This is a simple matter of semantics. If you want to use the word "compression" then a bigger number should be more compression (i.e. compressing something 90% is harder than compressing it 10%). If you want to use the percentage of the original size (which is fine) then it should simply be stated some other way so that it's unambiguous.

Edit: clarity