"Fixed that and the thing sprang to life."Great! I'm glad to hear it.
"To be clear on the TLE2426 / BUF634 combo--should I send out from the TLE to the in on the BUF?"
Exactly, this way the reference voltage will be buffered by the BUF634 and the TLE2426 will always be idling.
For the bass, it's probably that the opamps are lacking current to produce significant transients in the lower spectrum. To improve this you could buffer the opamps output by putting some BUF634 between the output and your headphones. But this would absolutely require you to buffer your power supply. And it would be near to impossible to drive on batteries.
Hope this helps!