From my limited testing:

By default m1 uses -s3 (pulseaudio) which tears all roms over 150kb (1942 works fine, street fighter/bubble bobble all in tears). Lowering bitrate (-r22050) helps a bit but is still unreliable. SDL playback (-s0) works much better, but at the default 44khz also works for only some roms. Combining the two (./m1 -s0 -r22050 <game>) works for most options (closing all background apps helps a lot, with browser working in the background there was tearing in sf2, with only m1 running, played fine). Of course lower bitrate means lower sound quality, but not sure if without digging into the code and optimizing there is anything one can do about it. Sorry

edit: one way around this if you have a favourite song (tested on bubblebobble, damned nostalgia) is using -w option. Generates a proper .wav file even when tearing on playback. Reencode this to mp3/ogg/... and you can play it without stuttering whenever you like