i personally don't like MAFW. It is full of Gobject stuff while freyja is Qt, and it isn't compatible with meego afaik. Phonon is the right path. It offers equalizer, but eq comes at a cost.

Also afaik mafw would limit some playlist features that i have in mind (like dynamic playlists). I'll see if it's worth it.

EDIT: it's not worth it. mafw is just a layer over gstreamer in maemo, and phonon uses gstreamer under maemo builds.