Here's what happened:

ripped a .ogg file from my cd using grip (don't know what a .ogg is, just an aside).

opened the file using xmms. Hit play button and it froze up. Killed it and it wouldn't restart.

re-installed latest version of xmms. started it, opened .ogg, hit play, and it froze.

Should I not try this kind of file.

if so, how do I specify file type in grip?

Not familiar with grip but xmms should be able to play oggs out of the box. Check to make sure you have the ogg vorbis plugin (libvorbis.so) and that it's enabled. Can't think what else it would be. An ogg is a file encoded with a free lossy compression format, like mp3 except that mp3 has patent issues (which is why RH doesn't ship with it by default, I think). Technically, oggs are supposed to be superior, though the difference is slight. I prefer them just becuz. If you have oggutils (which may be another issue if you don't) try playing it from the command line with 'ogg123 file' just to help make sure it's an xmms-specific problem.

If you want to rip real mp3s you will have to download a utility. The "non-RH grip" can rip mp3s. Just unistall the grip you have and download grip from its official site and intall it. You can check out the xmms site too to see if you can re-download ogg support and also pick up some mp3 support.

Also, I've heard data both way about which is better - ogg or mp3. I know an ogg requires something like 6% more proccessing power to play than mp3. So I've heard.