@voljega This is the SD card I'm using https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XWN9Q99/
I'm pretty sure it's a good one. More likely is people just aren't reading what I'm actually typing.

How to test:
1)Fresh install recalbox onto a Pi 3B.
2)Add Mario 3 ROM to game list.
3)Start Mario 3 game and press select button to move the little red arrow. It will make a sound as it moves.
4)Press Hotkey + B and use that menu to write a savestate (doing it other ways will not reproduce the bug)
5)Use that green Retroarch menu you're in to restart the game.
5)press select button to move the little red arrow. It will make a sound way after it moves, and you will notice the awful audio lag.

@substring

Sorry I wasn't clear. I'll touch on those 4 points.

1. How do I make RA not lag audio after it writes a file (savestate or .cfg)?
2. I talk about both Mario 3 for the NES and Guilty Gear for the PS1. I used other games in my testing such as F-Zero on SNES as well.
3. Yes. All cores that I tried have this bug. I tried more then 1 core on the NES and SNES, but I only tried the one PS1 core.
4. RecalBox relies heavily on RA does it not? if RA has a problem this bad Recalbox staff would benefit from letting RA know about this, or using something aside of RA as it's main system of emulation. If RA can not fix this bug I would suggest the latter as anything using RA on Recalbox is rather unplayable at this point.

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Hi, so I've been trying to get my audio to not lag on my Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. I've got this image as my Recalbox install: https://archive.recalbox.com/v1/upgrade/rpi3/recalbox.img.xz

I've currently got audio going through my HDMI using hdmi_drive=2 in my config file, and I can get my audio to be lag free unless there is a lot of stuff happening (I.E. I can get my NES emulator to have lagless audio in Mario 3's title screen, but in level 1-1 I end up with lag. Likewise I can get lagless audio on my PS1 emulator in Guilty Gear, but if I spam "Respect" I can create lag that lasts a little bit.

I'm trying to configure it so my emulators don't desync audio and video. Even if it means more input or video lag, but I noticed any change I made to retroarch.cfg by opening a game then pressing hotkey + B and then hitting back, going to settings (global) and changing something in audio would make my audio a lot more laggy.

After a while I noticed that the retroarch.cfg was the fastest audio, and then wondered if just making a change to retroarch.cfg would make audio lag. I deleted retroarch.cfg and rebooted, and then on the newly created retroarch.cfg I loaded Mario 3 and tested the audio: lagless until lots of stuff happening. Then, I used the Retroarch menu (hotkey + B)and changed the video resolution from 1:1 to 1:2 and saved the retroarch.cfg. Saved it, and restarted retroarch. I now had audio lag.

Finally I deleted retroarch.cfg again and rebooted. I opened Mario 3 and tested. No audio lag. I then pressed hotkey + B and used the menu to write a save state, and restarted Retroarch. I now had Audio lag again.

Can someone let me know why this might be happening, and when it'll be fixed? I'm really picky about my audio sync, so Recalbox is pretty much unplayable to me until this can be fixed. If I can run Soul Reaver on my Pi 3B I should be able to run Mario 3 without audio lag, ight?