I can’t see why this would happen, but wav files act exactly as they should when doing attenuation calculations based on distance from the listener and ogg files ignore it completely; all ogg sounds act as if they were at the listener’s location. The only part of my code that distinguishes between an ogg and wav file is the piece that loads the sounds. I thought that after it was loaded the two file types should act exactly the same. Ever seen something like this?
problem solved, was in the loading indeed. I didn’t notice before that the ogg I was using was recorded in stereo 
and stereo files don’t use the attenuation calculations. oops :-[
been there done that… should be in some FAQ 