Using GUI media players (like Maemo's, or Rockbox) requires redirecting the default sound output (managed by PulseAudio) to the ALSA device above. Sounds simple in principle, but unfortunately has proved intractable up to now :-) Then kirillkk chimed in with another solution : use MOC (mocp), a full-featured media player that happens to run in text mode, in the xterm console. The output device can be specified in its configuration file, so it's start and play... kirillkk provided his own build of MOC for Maemo, with some useful hints on how to install it. After a few fumbles I got it to work, it is truly very usable ! I do have a few questions for him when he comes back, though :-)