Question on sound emulation on emulators and a few other questions as well

Hey guys! I was wondering if you could all answer me a quick question (okay maybe a few) on sound emulation for various emulators!

For the actual option to change the sample of the sound (11000Hz, 22050Hz etc), which one provides the most accurate sound emulation? I know it says in the description for most emulators that the higher the sample is the better the sound quality is, but I can't seem to understand exactly HOW it sounds better, when I up the sound sample to 44000hz on picodrive, it actually messed up a number of sound effects, yet when I put it back to its defualt 22050hz sample, they sounded perfectly fine, just like on a real genesis. I also did not notice the music being of any better quality, despite what the emulators (others besides this one) claim. So is it just better to keep the sound sample on whatever options the devs have it for the default setting?

Also, for the SNES emulator, I'm using the latest mecm release and I noticed that on Mega Man X3, the sound is off. No, it is not emulator lag, I know the difference. The actual beats in the songs don't play as fast as they should, or in some cases the sound seems as though it is skipping a bit. No it is not the version of this emulator, because it did the same exact thing on all previous versions, and it is not the rom either, because it is a verified good dump and I tried another anyways. Why is this?

Is there any kind of arcade emulator where I can play X-men, simpsons, and both TMNT arcade games with at least halfway decent performance? I noticed that the hires version or whatever does not seem to support those games, but I did see a new aracde emulator that was released this year actually on qj.net, but it did not list any romsets that were compatible with it so I'm just wondering.

Well, as far as the sample rates go, the higher the better is in many cases true. However, for the SNES, its original sample rate was 32000Hz, and setting it for that frequency should give accurate sound for less of a cost in speed than 44100Hz (in fact, 44100Hz can sometimes sound off). That said, I'm not sure if the PSP has any specific sample rate that it's "locked" to, like the SoundBlaster Live was (48kHz), and if so, you'd get better quality out of matching that regardless, but I get the feeling that's not the case.

With the Genesis, all of its sound was generated by FM synthesis, so there wasn't really a sample rate as such - Though, usually, 22050Hz is more than enough for the Genesis to sound just fine. In the case of the NES, it was actually able to generate tones up to an incredibly high range, but generally 44100Hz will sound accurate; 22050Hz will sound perfectly fine through the speakers, but will sound somewhat staticcy through good headphones.

TL;DR, in practice, the best thing to do with sample rates is to match the original hardware. If you don't know it, the higher the better.

Mega Man X3 seems to cause major lag with SNES9x on the PSP, and I don't really think there's anything that can be done about that aside from frameskip or turning off the sound. It's just a really intense game.

As for arcade emulators capable of playing those games... I'm not sure.

Lag? I play it all the time on my PSP, and I have not gotten any major lag.