CD Audio cuts out during attract mode in Shadow of The Beast

[CyberLabSystems]

I’ve been having an issue with Shadow of The Beast for TurboGrafx-CD. During the attract mode several full screen still images are cycled while some awesome CD background music is played, however during the transitions between stills the music pauses briefly and it totally messes up the timing and immersion of this simple but enjoyable part of this game.

This does not occur on real hardware.

I’ve tested it with redump images both CHD as well as uncompressed. Turned CD Cache on and off. With the image on an SSD as well as mechanical hard disk drive, it still occurs no matter what.

Update:
Okay, so I disabled Video Shaders and it went away.

I use HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader but I didn't suspect this as a contributor due to the fact that my GPU usage maxes out at 84%, while my CPU usage tops out at 7% during this intro sequence. I also have Run Ahead and Frame Delay enabled so I'm going to disable those or reset them to default and see what happens

Disabling Run Ahead with the Shader running didn't make a difference. Neither did Disabling Run Ahead plus resetting Frame Delay to 0 and turning off Automatic Frame Delay.

Going to try the Performance Shader Presets now.

With the performance Preset in use, my maximum GPU usage drops to 76% (but it's mostly tops out at 69%) while my CPU usage tops out at 4%

This is with Run Ahead and Frame Delay still disabled.

When I switched to HSM Mega Bezel Reflection Shader's Potato base preset the issue us about 80% gone. There are still some signs of dropouts but they're a lot shorter.

Max GPU usage is at 31% while CPU usage tops out at 5% (but it's mostly at 1 to 2%)

After a while of looping its not as noticeable but I can still see the spikes Frametime spikes and FPS drops and hear the slight pauses in the music during the attract mode scene transitions occasionally.

Tried Newpixie-CRT no issues with dropouts whatsoever, smooth Frametime and framerate graph with max GPU usage at 17% and CPU usage topping out at 3%.

When I load CRT-GUEST-ADVANCE it's probably a little better than when I tried the HSM Potato Preset.
GPU usage maxing out at 27% and CPU at 2%.

CRT Royale-Composite seemed to have slightly less dropouts than CRT-GUEST-ADVANCE despite having similar GPU and CPU usage.

Lastly CRT-Geom Deluxe had a more consistent GPU usage figure of 40% with my GPU ClockSpeed remaining at a more or less constant 2000MHz and CPU usage at 2% Max and the issue was basically non-existent.

Even after playing around with some of the Shader Parameters in CRT-Geom Deluxe which caused my GPU Usage to increase to 59% Max and my CPU Usage to top out at 3%, the intro music in Shadow Of The Beast still played on without skipping a beat!

All of these tests were run with CD Cache Enabled in Beetle PCE Fast's Core Options.