Ubuntu :: No Sound After Using ~/.xinitrc With Startx

I am using a custom minimal install of Ubuntu 10.04 I built up from scratch using mini.iso. All went well till I decided to add .xinitrc to my home dir and autostart.sh (for openbox) to ~/.config/openbox in order to automatically launch a number of common programs when I load up my desktop using startx. I use alsa for my sound server; I installed alsa-base, alsa-utils and alsa-oss pretty much first thing after installing my new system and sound was working perfectly up until a few hours ago. What gets me is that alsa ought to be loading up as I boot into Linux, I can't see how xinitrc or autostart.sh can even affect it, but it seems switching to using those has caused some sort of issue with it, as I am now without sound. Everything else worked fine witht he change, my desktop is loading just how I want it now, all the rest of my sorftware is working fine as best I can tell, it's just the sound that is now borked. Has anyone else had this issue, I've searched all over with no luck so far. If it helps, I am not using any desktop environments, just openbox with a small handful of hand picked packages, I've been running this system for nearly 2 weeks now without any issues until now, and this one has me stumped.