[Cont3mplation]

So despite this thread now being a good bit old will leave a final message here if anyone encounters the same issue. After leaving it for months I finally came back to this problem and found that you can test capacitors using a normal multimeter set to resistance measurement. When you test a cap that is working normally, the resistance will start from a value depending on the voltage and till then increase as the capacitor drains. Used this to test all the caps on the amplifier circuit and whaddaya know I found one that wasn't working correctly. Shorting across the pads with some wire I found it now made sound, quiet sound at that but sound nonetheless. I replaced this cap with a similarly sized one I had and went on to test the other capacitors on the same line. Replaced them too and at the end it now plays back audio relatively fine. Some crackling here and there but I'll certainly take that over nothing. tl;dr: caps were dead and replacing them fixed the issue. Hope this helps anyone who finds a similar issue at some point in the future.