So a while after I posted that I looked into someone else's code (OpenSyobon3DS) for how they handled audio (they technically got the code from Smealums Portal3DS, the difference being that theirs actually worked as I imagine Smealum hasn't worked on that in a while), which I had previously been looking at but to no avail. But after messing around for a while and really just putting a bunch of debug code everywhere to see what was and wasn't happening I did get it to work.
So although in the end I didn't use your suggestion, I still thank you for your help and hope I didn't waste any valuable time ;p .