As far as that is concerned, SSF is a great example. It doesn't need a BIOS to run, but games that make use of the clock and such will not work because the BIOS manages all of that stuff. Edit: Well, sram won't make them not work, you just can't save your game. =P
It's not due to bad emulation. You use one BIOS and it sounds like that, you use this other BIOS and it sounds correctly.
Yeah, there are two different file dumps, I have both. I was told when I got the better one that the original was just a dump of a pre-release unit. Dunno if there's any truth to that or not.