Yer School answered it already, I managed to get the sound glitches worked out, hopefully I'll find my disc soon. It's not like it's a deal breaker thankfully. Thanks for the reply here though in case anyone else had the same question. I've been enjoying the game so much as a speed game.

I've been doing some soft practicing the runs on emulator, specifically using Retro Arch's core Swan Station. This has been my compromise as I'm not able to find my disc and it's likely in storage [this is what I get for going for digital backups over keeping track of my physical copies]. My general question is, while I read that epsxe 1.9.0 is the required emulator for official runs [and I did get it set up even though I'm constantly cringing at several audio glitches I can't seem to fix.] is there any potential chance to expand the categories of acceptable emulators? I'm not sure when the category rules were set up but I figured I'd ask. I also wanted to ask is there a reason why the newer version of epsxe hasn't been added to the requirements? Thanks.