I just want to report that the cross compile issue I had with minimad appears to be resolved. Part of the problem was that my MPEG source was mono, and I was trying to play it as stereo. So the sound output depended a lot on the input, i.e. something that started as a chirp got more messed with then did a song, and both play at 2X. I don't know if this was the only problem, but I remade from a clean installation and changed my copy of minimad to output stereo and I got the desired result.
I probably will not resolve the issue with zlib and the configuration with for cross platform installation of mad play.
emil