PA works on Firefox/flash, doesn't work on mplayer/vlc

[spideybr@xxxxxxxxx (Claudio Roberto França Pereira)]

Hi there. The title says it all... I'm a Gentoo user, I'm using
pulseaudio-1.99.2 with udev module (sinks and sources auto detection),
and I don't have audio output. That started a couple weeks ago, maybe
it's related with Gentoo's addition of a udev rule for PA, don't know
the details.
Maybe a fellow gentoo user can help me out? I've followed the perfect
audio setup wiki page, I don't have a .asoundrc, but have a
/etc/asound.conf:

$ cat /etc/asound.conf
pcm.pulse {
        type pulse
}

ctl.pulse {
        type pulse
}

pcm.!default {
        type pulse
}

ctl.!default {
        type pulse
}

Any help is appreciated. More info:
 $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC269VB Analog [ALC269VB Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

$ aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
    PulseAudio Sound Server
sysdefault:CARD=PCH
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    Default Audio Device
front:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    Front speakers
surround40:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
surround41:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround50:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
surround51:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
surround71:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, ALC269VB Analog
    7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
hdmi:CARD=PCH,DEV=0
    HDA Intel PCH, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output

I'm currently not using any DE's, just awesome XSession. I'm
initializing it through slim (slim.berlios.de). I've heard slim now
handles consolekit invocation. Should I still add the dbus-launch
wrapper before awesome in my Xsession script? My awesome xsession
initializes lots of things (this is Gentoo default, I guess), and then
just exec awesome. Is that the correct way to do this?

--
Claudio Roberto Fran?a Pereira