Finally I got time to unplug all cables from my desktop, and test Audigy 2ZS Video Editor with N900 - fpp was right, in fact it works as audio device (+ 4 port, powered USB 2.0 HUB, that is bundled inside), leaving only video capabilities for proprietary drivers = inaccessible.

I've tested it with mplayer terminal command, and it worked as expected. So, I've tried smplayer, and guess what, it *works* flawlessly!

smplayer is great mplayer front-end available from repositories. Of course, as it's still mplayer, it doesn't allow to use DSP assist in decoding... Yet, its using GUI and settings, to allow doing every thing that you can do with mplayer via terminal (at least, things that I'm aware of), adding to it every function that You would expect from GUI media player, like manipulating playlists, normalizing volume etc.

it's no different when it comes to selecting output audio device - I was able to choose my USB sound card via GUI drop-down list. Fortunately, no one decided that this option should be cut off while porting to Maemo "as no one could ever use it at the time of porting [it seems to me, that it was ported before hostmode become available]" - kudos for original creator/porting dev.

Furthermore, in my case it uses exact same amount of CPU time to decode, as when using N900's internal DAC. To be precise - mplayer process itself uses more CPU with external DAC, yet, with internal DAC, CPU cycles are "divided" between mplayer and pulseaudio. I've tested many times, and result were the same - 60-61% @500 mhz when decoding Q=6, VBR, lowpass=20kHz ogg file. At first, this part of my findings seems to be opposite to Oblomow research, yet, I'm not sure if "dividing" CPU cycles between mplayer and pulseaudio (when using internal DAC) was considered there (?).
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So, there is comfortable way to use external DAC with GUI - I think that main idea can be considered as achieved, and that concludes trying to compile some other (also non using DSP) players, as obsolete.

Of course, we still need to figure out how to use external card with OMP (or stock player, whatever), utilizing MAFW DSP-assisted decoding. Also, it would be great to figure some similarly easy way to record audio from mixer with stereo (and up) microphones. Heck, even my mentioned card got plentora of IN's (jacks, line-ins, optical-in, MIDI or whatsnot), and I have no idea - yet - how to determine which one is (to be) used, when recording via terminal.

/Estel