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Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 12.3% on P2P Traffic
prostoalex writes "According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic. Moreover, 12.3% of all the music files traded on P2P networks are in Ogg format. Almost all of the OGG files are traded via BitTorrent protocol with most of the growth coming from Asia, CacheLogic says."
Percentage figures like these are going to spell doom for torrents. They're going to do nothing but light a big fire under the MPAA and RIAA's asses (Not like they needed it). Expect more fake/ spoofed files masquerading as legitimate movies/ music. People should start thinking about using some bolt-on software for their EDonkey (or ??), much like http://donkeyfakes.gambri.net/ ,or they're going to be downloading a lot of Garbage (and not the Shirley Manson type either).
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Better compression, better sound, better freedom. 'Nuf said.
Open source music on open source protocols... Who would have thunk?
What a horrible thing the ESRB just did to the game industry.
Now give me some FLAC.
> According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic.
Is this really a huge shock? After all your average movie is (let's just say) 500 megabyte, with your average song at around 2 megabyte - of course video traffic is going to outweigh audio downloads by a great amount.
What's wrong with Mp3 and WMA?
The linux community at large seems to have a strong sentiment in favor of using ogg over mp3. I personally tried ogg but in my media player of choice (xmms) the equalizer had absolutely no effect on ogg files whereas with mp3 files the equalizer worked, thus making the mp3 sound much, much better than the non-equalized (don't know the technical name for it) sound of the ogg file. Does anyone know why this is? Am I missing a good thing by not using ogg or is ogg just hyped up a bit much?
this figure is lower or higher to iTunes store traffic
12.3% of MUSIC transfers, which is 11.34% of all traffic -- so Ogg makes up 1.4% of all P2P traffic. Which ain't bad at all, but is nowhere near 12.3
That's about a percent of all traffic.
Holy Hyperbole Batman!
But? But? They help legitamize our beloved BT. Let's keep them, shall we?
--
The "are you a script" word for today is infects
I used to ripp all my CDs straight to ogg, but seeing as I cant play ogg in my car, I've abandoned the idea.
Why no play the original CD's? I hear you say, because my car got broken into and they were all stolen.
Ogg's for cars would definiately be a great idea.
Karma whoring
Way more CPU cycles!
Way less compatibility!
Way doesn't work on my iPod!
"According to CacheLogic survey, 61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video, with audio taking distant second place, representing 11.34% of global traffic."
If we assume that the average audio file is 5MB, which is probably too large, then there would only be a file-to-file equivalence if the average video file was less than 30MB, which is very small. You can't fit a single half-hour episode of some anime show into 30MB unless you have ridiculously poor quality. So it's reasonable to conclude that a much greater number of audio files are being traded, and video files use more bandwidth because video files are bigger, rather than because video files are more popular than audio files. An actual ratio would require data on the size of the average traded video file.
Alphanos
I only hope this percentage has an actual meaning... On the plus side, it will be a pleasure to download those CD's that have "rip" ""protection" in ogg. I proudly buy my music, but I cannot stand _any_ DRM, I rip all my CD's in ogg, and get them on my neuros music player. Great quality, smaller file size, I love it.
Freedom is strength, Ignorance is peace, War is slavery.
12.3% are in the open-source OGG file format (almost all of which are exclusively traded on the BitTorrent network, particularly in Asia).
I think part of the reason ogg is bigger in asia is the iPod. The iPod is much bigger in the USA than asia, and it does not play ogg. Asia has players that can handle ogg, so people go with the superior format. I would like to see the day when my iPod can play ogg (i'm not holding my breath, apple isn't exactly known for adding more features to the old iPods) or americans move to other players and oggs become more popular.
I gotta get my free porn somehow... And I love watching Lindsay Lohan... but would never lower myself to actually buying a movie of hers. I'd never be able to show my face in public again if I were caught!
61.44% of the peer-to-peer traffic nowadays is video
I wonder what percentage of that is video minors are allowed to see?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/mp32ogg/
"Why do you automatically assume it's copyright-infringed music?"
*starts up Azureus*
*Types in Britnay Spears.ogg*
Oh I don't know. Call it a hunch.
that Ogg is the format of thieves and vagabonds, as I have always suspected...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
According to PhatNoise (PhatNoise.com) the latest firmware revision for their PhatBox supports OGG Vorbis up to 192kbps. You have to email them to get that information, because it's nowhere onthe site. I'm tempted to buy one.
Too bad Ogg being used on P2P networks won't be enough to convince portable audio device vendors of supporting the protocol.
Because compressing an already compressed file is such a fucking good idea.
I'll stick with my pirated MP3s, at least I'll know they'll work on others' PCs and iPods.
If you expect people to buy inferior portable music players just so they can play your filthy hippy format, you're going to be disappointed.
You have fun with your player that plays the formats you have and use. The rest of the world will continue using superior players that play the format everyone else has and uses. Don't worry though, your embracing of a pointless and incompatible format makes you special!
PS: There's really no need to be such a butthole when you're defending your format. It doesn't exactly make people want to go out and try it when it appears to be the choice of bitchy little fucksticks.
Until iTunes supports Ogg it will never progress. SAD, but true.
http://www.uncoverip.com/
I tried out several encoders in 2001 when considering compressing my music library. I tried double blind tests on the best realistic equipment I'd be using (then a 10 year old amp and pretty new Bose 501 speakers -- both are now clearly 4 years older) using my PC sound card's RCA outputs. Not an audiophile setup by any means, but certainly a bit better than the PC's internal speaker.
In my tests, Ogg Vorbis at 192KBps, MP3 (LAME) at 256KBps and something else.. WMA? at 256KBps were not decipherable from the original CD to my ears. Interestingly enough, I favored Ogg Vorbis even more because when I backed it down to 128KBps the artifacs I could hear sounded better than MP3's at 168. My choice was made -- Ogg Vorbis at 192KBps would be my preferred codec.
So I went around looking for what could play it. Only a few pieces of software (winamp and xmms were the two I cared about) and zero hardware. I had aspirations of taking music with me, so that left all but MP3 out of the game at the time.
I currently use iTunes to store and organize my library of 400+ CDs and synchronize a subset to my 1st generation 5GB iPod. Now that I've put that much effort into a single program, either another organizer will need to beat iTunes by being more comprehensive, useful, intuitive and stable, or iTunes will have to support Ogg Vorbis for me to encode future CDs in a codec other than MP3. Once iTunes encodes and plays Ogg Vorbis files, then I'll see about an iPod or similar that will play them (these days I'm in the iPod Shuffle price range). Since iTunes is a free (as in beer.. but where's all this free beer people talk about?) encoder, I'm not willing to pay for the inconvenience of switching to a new program.
My brother took a copy of his Black Adder DVDs back with him to China in Xvid+Vorbis format (to save damaging the originals).
6 months later I buy a pirate copy in Mexico to show to a friend because I don't have *my* originals with me, and it was the same files (or at least, the same checksum when I checked with him). Also on the disk was a vorbis codec and instructions about how to install it... and how to rip new media with it to best effect.
Something to think about.
Beep beep.
Ogg Vorbis files *do not* constitute 12.3% of all P2P traffic, as suggested by the title - the summary clearly says 12.3% of *Audio* files. So actually the headline should read "Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 1.39% on P2P Traffic." Wow, not so interesting.
Seriously, this is just a great example of GPL for the hell of it. If it makes you happy fine, but it's totally useless to the majority of the populace. An excellent example of Stallman-ism's irrelevance to the actual audience.
11.34% * 12.3% = 1.39% of total traffic.
Are there any portable music players that support .ogg vorbis yet? (and are they any good?)
Believe with me, my saplings.
Percentage figures like these are
Suit up guys.... Lock and load. We're going after Bill.
The Bill??!
Yep.
But he survived an attack from Washington.
We're the RIAA. We're bigger than Washington.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
"Almost all of the OGG files are traded via BitTorrent protocol with most of the growth coming from Asia..."
This provides more proof that open-source is a communist plot -- most open-format audio files traded on those illegal p2p networks come from Asia, home to the largest communist country on Earth! Protect American business and ban p2p and the GPL!
Does the equalizer work for WAV files?
If not, then most likely the reason is that their EQ is completely MP3-specific. The process of MP3 decoding generates for each frame a set of 32 frequency components extracted from the compressed bitstream, which are then converted back into the time domain ("pcm synthesis").
Probably they implement a crude EQ by manipulating the frequency bands which are already available as an integral part of the decode process.
I think you could do the same with ogg, but it sounds like they don't.
Actually ogg is a container format which can contain both sound and video. Vorbis is the audio format.
But do people actually use Theora yet? Last time I checked, it wasn't even out of alpha.
No, this is comparing apples and oranges.
Ogg is just a container for other stuff.
Theora video
Vorbis audio
FLAC
etc
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Great info here: http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/ogg-on-ipod-why-th e-ipod-may-not-have-the-horsepower-for-ogg-015607. php
And at the bottom of the page, there are 2 other interesting links.
frist post!!!@!11 iam so awesome! forsty psis!
what does roman polansky think about this?
You didn't think they were saying ogg represented 12.3% of all P2P traffic did you?
<title>Ogg Vorbis Share Reaches 12.3% on P2P Traffic</title>
Ogg Vorbis merely takes up 10% of the percentage that music takes up of P2P traffic.
its a percentage of percentage.
[cx]
If we assume that the average audio file is 5MB, which is probably too large
Recorded music on BitTorrent is usually albums, not singles. Albums on BitTorrent are at least 40 MB in most cases.
Yay! Does that mean we can buy music players that support vorbis, soon? Are there any portable CD-players in the US that support it? My collection of oggs is angry, being confined at home.
I never really use them anymore, but I remember that if you're looking for something on the P2P networks that isn't a top 40 hit you're at mercy
of the seeders/uploaders/whatever you call them. If the parties ripping the music files decide to use Ogg over mp3 and the downloaders want the song, they're going to find a way to play them. This goes double for binaries groups... I remember quite a few times having to find new players for the various formats people would use, because I really wanted to hear more obscure (and otherwise unavailable) recordings.
I also wonder, though this is pure speculation, if non-mp3 (and non-wma?) formats are gaining popularity because of the floods of garbage mp3s. The RIAA and whoever else is responsible probably aren't bothering with the marginal formats, at least not yet.
I believe it is possible to stop this RIAA 'well poisoning'. After I did my work in DSP (wavelet theory) I spent a while working on methods of analysis that can be used to provide a signature for digital files based on a spectral checksum. You probably heard recently about the **AA hoping to use this kind of algorithm to snoop on filesharers and identify copyright material on users machines.
Well, we can turn this theory against them and use this to remove junk from filesharing repositories. The key is to use in combination with Torrents. Typically a poisoned file is not detectable until you have already downloaded all of it, by which time it's too late. Normal file transfers like FTP are vulnerable, but not a torrent.
Since torrents split a file into many small parts
this lends itself to a distributed (random access) signature check. With only a few packets of a torrent it should be possible to determine if an audio (or video) file is the genuine article.
This does not require that you have a precomputed analysis of the file, it works on any file dynamically constructing the distance matrix on the fly.
As an outline: The order in which torrent units arrive is not sequential, you may get the first chunk followed by chunk 3167, then chunk 23, etc... Now then.. If a file is junk the mean distance between a sufficiently large set of chunks is low [the poisoning usually fills the file with noise or a looped segment] , if the file is genuine the average of these differences will be large, since most music and video evolves.
An extention to the torent protocol could perhaps expose this 'spectral diversity profile with only a handful of chunks'
Admitedly, very repetitive music might throw false negatives, but most music should pass the test.
Please mod up if you feel this worthy of dicussion. Cheers.
Actually there is more to be said. The fact that Ogg is 12% of audio files demonstrates that either
The study is flawed and is only monitoring a niche population not the general population.
Or
The record industry has been successful and mainstream users are not trading audio they way they used to, that only a niche population is engaging in large scale audio piracy.
Ogg is good technology but it has not been embraced by 12% of digital audio users.
"There are commercial artists who I respect for their music, but I don't respect the attitude of them or anyone else who one the one hand claims to be an artist and then on the other demands that people pay money for their works in order to support their lifestyle. They should go and get a real job like the rest of us!"
That would be the one going overseas, right?
Does anyone know of a mass converter for MP3 -> OGG? I am a windows user and the only one I can find is oggasm which is only for linux. Also all my mp3s are 192kbs, what is the quality equivalent for OGG. Some people are saying 128kbs, however that seems low to me. Thanks for any help.
P2p music downloaders have to re-encode 12.3% of their music downloads.
only 12.3% of thieves and vagabonds.
Do NOT transcode from one lossy format to another lossy format.
The result is something that is even worse. Don't do this ever.
Rip from the source (CD, WAV, etc.). Never transcode. Ever. I can't say this enough!
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Or Apple Lossless. This is really where the online music stores should be leading the way, rather than wait for the hackers to lead the way like the music industry did in the 1990s. If iTMS or a similar music store offered lossless downloads they would be presenting a real alternative to record stores and a legal alternative to p2p that is also much more reliable. Even 99 cents a song is too much for a lossy mp3 or AAC file; but for a guaranteed good FLAC version I bet many people would be willing to pay the 99cents rather than take their chances on getting a bad file off p2p (after waiting for the 23M download).
How about even a single 5 second, random sound in the middle of an MP3? No one would want that shitty MP3... and no software would ever catch that. Note: RIAA... I am looking for work. I'll take $10.50/hour.
Check out the iAudio X5. Plays all sorts of formats, and is Linux friendly. No software, just drag and drop you stuff onto it and it plays.
Are there any portable music players that support .ogg vorbis yet? (and are they any good?)
Yes, and yes. Linux friendly, also.
"...apparently it is, or people would not be willing to pay that much for it."
Apparently they don't teach economics in school anymore.
Anyway what the OP really meant to say was "I'm envious of the success of others, but I don't have the talent to compete with them. So I'll pretend that what they're doing isn't a 'real job' so I'll feel better about myself"
--
The "are you a script" word for today is surreal
Ooops, I ment 67% of .1% of hacked computers. My bad :)
Roses are red
Violets are blue
In Soviet Russia
Poems write you!
Patents.
We use Ogg Vorbis as our music file of choice for our online music service. It is a really great format that works really well. All of our files are encoded at 160k (which is about 192k or more in mp3 format).
I can't believe that more sites don't use Ogg Vorbis.
I have nothing clever to put here...
No car stereo head unit is available. Which is what I would REALLY like to use to play vorbis files.
The guy might have been slightly trollish in the apple-cock statement, but I'd personally of modded it funny :P
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
THIS JUST IN....
A suprising study conducted by my cock has shown that 99% of the videos on p2p networks are PORN!!!
But 12.3% of 11.34% is not something to be proud of.
no surprise there.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I just got a Cowon iAUDIO X5L 30GB player. This thing is sweet...
I just bought one of these too. This is the first time I ever paid near full retail for a geek gadget immediately after it first hit the market... usually I always wait a while until prices come down, or a new model is released and the first version models get discounted since I'm a cheapskate, but this time I'm very pleased with my purchase and glad to be an early-purchaser. The X5 has better sound quality than just about all other DAPs on the market. I specifically bought it for the OGG and FLAC support, and really didn't matter if it had video or not, but that's proven to be a neat novelty to have too. The "JetAudio" software the thing came with is pretty slick too. The GUI interface for ripping and converting is so easy to operate that I've quit using all the other softwares I formerly used for that. I play it in my car thru an FM converter and that sounds ok, but I really need to pull the car stereo and add a 1/8" stereo mini-jack to the aux input wiring so I can go direct and get a stronger cleaner signal.
The X5 is about the best sounding portable DAP with OGG support. Also supports FLAC too. Got mine at NewEgg.
A paraphrase of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's media campaign of 1971 ("War is Over, if you want it").
I no longer accept anyone's definition of copyright or the expectation of any person or corporation that they can legally deny access to any digitized recording, image, or written work for any reason.
Think I'm "stealing"? Think what you like, I don't care.
'The LAW explicitly says...". I don't care. The people who pass laws are directly paid by the corporations to pass laws that are directly benefit the corporations and no one else. That isn't law, it's just purchased muscle.
"The poor exploited musicians...", Give me a break. Get a job. Stop expecting people to give you money because "you're cool". The more the economy sinks, the less I feel inclined to give money to people because they extrude charisma.
I'm really beginning to wish that all the celebrities would all just go the fuck away. I really don't need them, I don't care about them, they don't care about me. I'm never going to give them any more money, regardless of what they do, or how great their new CD or film is. The 20th century is over, there's a new thing around, something is happening but you don't what it is, do you, Ms. Jones?
Get out of my face, and take your tits with you.
Bit misleading. And not quite as impressive.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Plenty of people have posted links to places where you can get zero-cost music. If you're interested in some political talk, give News from Neptune a try. Recordings are available as Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or Speex files. The Speex compressor is amazingly high-quality considering how small the files are relative to the Ogg Vorbis files. All of the recordings are licensed to share.
Digital Citizen
Shut the hell up Skeater! the last thing I want is the coppers raiding my home for "OGG VORBIS"!, MP3's? I got none.
HIV is the preferred format of queer to queer (q2q) connections
I'm a winxp user (tablet PC, don't know of a linux version), and I was going to convert my CD collection to a format. So far FLAC looks ideal, as I don't like compression artifacts.
The problem is that I need to easily encode from FLAC to MP3, as my cellphone, PDA, and car stereo use this format.
Is there a program that allows an easy conversion of multiple files (ideally from a playlist or similar) from FLAC to MP3 for portable devices or burning?
Thanks
that do not mind this at all
see www.indy.tv
www.irateradio.com
for a random selection
(I have kept well over 1000 tracks from listening to these for example)
or even places like radio stations
http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/listen/mp3s.htm
Not Free SF Reader
Ogg is a cintainer format, it is most comonly used to store Vorbis audio. Ogm is the extension used for video in an ogg file. Ogg is currently the best audio codec in doubleblind tests http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/result s.html
Vorbis audio is used in a lot of the video files on p2p networks etc.
TFA doesn't say Ogg Vorbis anywhere. It says Ogg. For all we know, that's 99% Ogg Speex files (i.e. audiobooks or other recorded voice) and 1% Ogg Vorbis. Or it could be the other way around. We don't know because the article doesn't say. The claim that it's Ogg Vorbis is completely fabricated by the Slashdot submitter.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
hare post here moderated? hov could have passed a post sayng so much wrong things?
ogg is the container, vorbis is the audio.
so, avi file with mp3 audio should count?
The pergentage indicated tell about nothing: is the donwloa hit, the download in size, or what?
the download ratio refers of the last week, the last year, or from the start of p2p?
aren't these new for nerds, stuff that matters?
this is plain misinformation, driven by ignorance.
I wonder if any of you guys who sit and debate over OGG, MP3, AAC, etc etc etc actually LISTEN and ENJOY the music, or just sit there all day debating over which is closer to the original WAV...
"I'm talking about morality here. Do those songs belong to you? Do you have a right to distribute them to people you don't even know?"
well, ermm... even if they don't belong to me, but I'm legally allowed to distribute them, then to your last question I can only answer: yes.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
As an Asian person myself, with many many asian friends, I can't honestly, truthfully, and accurately tell you that you don't know shiiiiitt.
The original poster is correct. North American content is NOT popular around the world, as many Americans would like to believe (and I'm one of them).
And no they are NOT copies. God, grow up!
...nope no worries for me.
Assuming that really was your brother's file that ended up on the black market. Why do I care?
Your brother either:
A. had his file stolen. (I sympathize.)
OR
B. gave his file to someone else who shared it around or shared it around himself. (He distributed it.)
Either way, why would this effect my desire to encode my own copies of multimedia? Why should I worry or "think about" it?
Oh yes. In fact, I even used the plugin for a while. Two major problems: First, it doesn't work with AirTunes, so the music reverts to the computer's speakers when the playlist hits an Ogg Vorbis file. This sucks as bad as the iBooks' toy speakers. Second, when iTunes went to 4.8, the plugin crashed my system. Bad, hard, complete, reproducable. I haven't tried the plugin with 4.9 and I don't intend to, because I don't want to go through the whole thing in 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 etc.
The reason I bought an Apple is because I don't have time at the moment for a computer that isn't in the "Just Works" class. If I still had time to fool around with plugins and such, I'd be using a ThinkPad with Gentoo.
And anyway -- this is not like asking Apple to switch to Intel or make a mouse with four buttons. This should be simple. Ogg Vorbis is not a fringe format anymore, and it would be nice for Apple to actually listen to what seems to be a substantial part of their customer base for once without the usual decades of telling us that we don't really need it.
OK so 46% of video is in microsoft formats, but probally not using microsoft codecs...
AVI (Audio Video Interleave) is a microsoft format but the audio codec most commonly used is mp3 and the most common video codec used is DivX / XviD.
From a technical point of view 46% of video probally is in microsoft formats but the amount of microsoft video formats containing microsoft codecs is probally very low!
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own" - Adam Savage
Ogg is useless to me. I already converted all of my cds to mp3. My car deck plays burned mp3 cds, and my tv entertainment center plays mp3s through the home network.
Ogg is 100% useless to me, no matter how good it is.
iRiver mp3 players play ogg files, nuff said.
The older, hard drive based players do and are very nice. The newer 5 gig ones do not. Also, the littler players with the thumb joystick have broken usbfs that does not work under linux, so you will be stuck with DRM encumbered and virus prone Winblows for your music that way. I was willing to pay the extra money for the device but not to put up with broken USB and brought it back. So, if you want something iRiver that works with free music you are still stuck paying a premium for an expensive device which may not be available.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Is there a program that allows an easy conversion of multiple files (ideally from a playlist or similar) from FLAC to MP3 for portable devices or burning?
Media Center. Can do on-demand transcoding of formats for different destinations, be they devices or streams. Can also intelligently downsample bandwidth to throttle for narrow client pipes. Amazing software.
Da Blog
another organizer will need to beat iTunes by being more comprehensive, useful, intuitive and stable
Yes, there is one. Media Center. Can do on-demand transcoding between pretty much every format for different destinations, be they devices or streams. Can also intelligently downsample bandwidth to throttle for narrow client pipes. Also does ASIO and multi-zone. Amazing software.
Da Blog
One word (one TLA, really): AVC.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
So of course video will produce more traffic.
How much of that video is pr0n? The MPAA cant do shit about pr0n.
Thats why I share pr0n on the ratio sites. Its way safer.
Buy an empeg.
The empeg runs on linux. The player binary (closed source) included a licensed wma decoder.
Before anyone thinks about asking for that binary - forget it. It is tied closely to the empeg hardware.
nice post
and the guy above me that replied to you, it was jesus on the cross you stupid ass not god.
besides whats your god then if it killed jesus? satan? allah? yoru sig makes no fucking sense you stupid 16 year old loser
It's good to hear that OGG market share has declined to such a point. I wonder how long it will take to reach zero. Long live MP3!
You mean give away their entire rap catalog? I think not!!
i wonder if they include archives... a little bird told me that much of what is xfer'd is in rar, tar, and zip.
"You market your crap to enough people and someone's going to be stupid enough to buy it. Doesn't mean that people in general like it."
Translation: I can't understand why people don't like the music I like? They must be stupid.
Whatever the numbers are....
Most people say, Ogg What???
Personally I avoid them since they don't support album art. Every song in my collection has cover art. Even the audio books. Likewise those on my home network use iTunes (win and mac). Until a better plugin is released....
FLAC achieves a compression ratio of 55% on average. So assuming a 44100 Hz 16-bit stereo wav:
(4500000000 bytes/(44100 hz * 2 bytes * 2)) / 0.55 = ~13 hours
But even if you can't hear a difference with the equipment you use now, you can't be sure that the next set of speakers won't enable you to hear a difference; when I originally got introduced to mp3, I ripped a few cd's with a bitrate of 128 kbit because I couldn't hear a difference between that and the original. But when I upgraded to a better set of speakers, my mp3's sounded the same as before, but the original cd's had a wider range of sounds that couldn't be heard on my old speakers. By using FLAC you can be sure that your audio will be a perfect copy of the original; I would think that this is especially important if you archive your music on DVD's. Also, what's the point with digital audio if you can't have identical copy of the original?
Oh, and I didn't know lossless is popular among live concert recorders. It makes sense though; if the source is of poor quality, degrading it further with lossy compression sounds like a very bad idea.
No codec should have to implement an equalizer - the same equalizer should be tacked on to the output of whichever decoder is being used, by the audio player.
As the other posts state, XMMS is not well maintained. The equalizer in beep-media-player works fine with Ogg Vorbis files on my Linux box.
As for hype, do some listening tests of your own, if you really want to know. To save time, you could try the Ogg Vorbis dare to compare listening tests. At the end of the day, use what sounds best to you - anyone else will have at least some natural bias.