Aging Super Nintendo Consoles Show Slight Increases in Processing Speed

Researchers and speedrunning enthusiasts find that aging SNES units are running faster than their original specifications due to changes in their audio processing unit.

The SNES's SPC700 audio processing unit, governed by a ceramic resonator, has shown a gradual increase in clock frequency over decades, now reaching up to 32,182 Hz compared to the original 32,000 Hz specification.
This phenomenon, first noticed by emulator developers in the early 2000s, has been corroborated through recent data collection from over 100 SNES units by speedrunning researcher Alan Cecil.
The faster APU clock speed may cause minor in-game audio pitch changes and slightly faster loading times, though the impact on human speedrunning records is negligible.
Tool-assisted speedruns using TASBot face challenges due to the timing inconsistencies introduced by these variations, complicating efforts to maintain frame-accurate synchronization.
Researchers attribute the changes to the natural degradation of the ceramic resonator over time, with ongoing studies aiming to better understand the long-term implications for emulation and retro gaming preservation.