ftp://ftp.arm.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/arm/people/nico/vorbis/

Compiling (with the cross compiler) the source yields a decoder that will successfully decode ogg files on the empeg.

The player they include 'vplay' is non-functioning, but we've got ways around that ...

That decoder took just under two minutes to decode (to a file) a 5 minute ogg song. I think it was 117 bit. But there won't be so much disk overhead when it's not having to write out a file while reading another from the same filesystem. And never the less it was still over twice as fast as it had to be for writing out to the audio device.

I got the resulting pcm file (from the decoder) to play using:
'dd if=Hydrate.pcm of=/dev/audio bs=4608'

And it sounds great.

Greg