@retropieuser555 the long and short of it is that framebuffer emulation is required for many games to function properly. There is a performance hit for having it on, but the alternative is that you'll have issues such as yours.

Apologies, I meant mame2003. Thanks for the info, after reading your post I had another idea, and I've found the best way to fix the sound:

In the tab menu, switch on test mode (the place where you set free play, adjust difficulty etc for the game). In that menu there is a volume control option for the game itself. It's down at the minimum volume by default, crank it up and the sound is fine.

Other Midway arcade games such as Mortal Kombat have the same issue and I see they all use the same sound chip. I haven't checked but I expect the same method will work.