That first link you posted of my thread where Pirate radio didn’t work was when Raspbian went from Jessie to Stretch. I think there was a glitch in the installer for the Pirate Radio. Something to do with Pulse Audio. That’s was fixed long ago. I’ve since done a new install on Stretch and everything worked Ok.
This thread, Pirate Radio pops but no music?
Around that same time, again during the transition to Stretch, the audio was all scratchy and being clipped. That was fixed too. And that fix is now rolled into the installer script. It kind of sounds like you tinkering set that config back to the one that doesn’t work so well. I’ll see if I can find that thread which details the issue and how to fix it.