Which multimedia framework should I choose?

[Stefan Monov]

I'm planning to write an application called Katch, used to (manually) write
down text that's "dictated" to you from an audio file. Since I use xine in
my day-to-day private multimedia activity, I was at first inclined to use
it for Katch. However:
1. What if the user is in a country where Helix is needed to play MP3s
legally?
2. What if xine turned up to be badly KDE-integrated or whatnot?
3. What if, when Phonon came in an year, I'll be forced to (non-trivially)
rewrite all my code to get it Phononized?

For issue one, a semi-sane solution seems to fork amaroK, stripping it down
to the engine abstaction part. In fact, I already started that, but gave it
up. Doesn't seem worth it.
For issue two, aRts comes to mind, but I've heard all kinds of bad things
about it.
For issue three, I could either put up with the low-quality (?) aRts (so
that the code would be easily ported to Phonon), or wait an year (which I
won't).

My only major requirement for the framework is that it should have
pitch/speed control. Noise removal would also be nice.

Any advice?
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