@zing Thanks for all your help! I'll join the discord and ask around there.

@Zing

What version of Recalbox are you using?
Did you build your Recalbox yourself, or did you buy it all ready-made, or even downloaded a ready-made image from the internet?
Can you test on another memory card, a clean image without configuration, to see if the problem persists?

At the time of my original post I was using a fresh install of the latest version of RecalBox. As of today, I grabbed a new SD card and installed the latest version of RecalBox using Raspberry Pi Imager. Sorry, I don't know where to find the changelog for the exact version numbers. I only purchased an RPi 4b and the necessary accessories. It has more than sufficient cooling.

The problem has persisted, but perhaps I see more clearly why. Under the advanced settings and advanced emulator configuration, the options to use other cores becomes severely limited while in CRT mode. I'm assuming not all cores have compatibility with CRT mode and they are being disabled when CRT mode is enabled. All cores reappear in this menu when CRT mode is disabled. It's not just PSX cores, it's for every system. I just happen to be unaffected otherwise.

Now, I have access to 4 PSX cores when not in CRT mode. With CRT mode enabled I have access to one core: Swanstation. So I guess my actual problem is that Swanstation simply doesn't work for me, and as that is the only available core in CRT mode, I either get it to work or I don't get to play PSX on my CRT. I can't find a lot of information about swanstation, though. Most of it is info on some sort of developer drama that I don't care about.

I guess my problem now is that Swanstation just runs really, really poorly. I'd say I get about 1 to 8 seconds per frame. Not 1-8 frames per second, 1-8 seconds per frame. It eventually just freezes during the BIOS screen. With CRT mode disabled I just get a black screen and then my Pi freezes. Any other advice would be appreciated, or any insight as to why so many cores are incompatible with CRT mode. Thanks Zing.

@zing I unfortunately wasn't able to gleem anything useful from those links. The furthest I've gotten so far is to get the PSX version of 240p test suite to boot okay. This doesn't appear to be using swanstation.

Is there any way to disable or remove the core? Or even to get swanstation to run without a constant stutter? I'm really not finding much info on this at all.

Started using Recalbox with an RGB-Pi on my Pi4, I really appreciate the compatibility. The only issue I'm having so far is with Playstation 1. When not in CRT mode it boots to whatever core I set in the advanced emulator settings. When switched to CRT mode it seems to only boot Swanstation. This does not run well at all on my, I'd prefer to use the default pcsx_rearmed. Any ideas as to why this is?