Just happened on this thread after doing a search. I’m having the same poor audio on my Pirate Radio / pHat Beat in Stretch. Pirate Radio poor audio quality. (Rasbian Stretch)
Mine is an older pHat Beat, which, if I’ve read things correctly, is why I’m having this issue. I went to Stretch to get rid of the pops etc when changing channels. I guess I need to go back to Jessie?
The last install I tried to do on Jessie failed though. I got no sound no matter what I tried. Just pops when pressing buttons. Redid it several times with the same results, would not work. I’m currently running a backup image I made way back of a working Jessie full install. Sound quality is good but the pops are annoyingly there when I change channels etc. What do I do now?