I feel I should pitch in my opinion on the decision to reject music with an echo delay exceeding $04. As a music porter since late 2007, of course I care about music quality, but functionality is far more important, because without it, as smkdan said, where is the quality at all?
I use SNESGT v0.218, which does have the echo buffer bug that allows all delay values to work. I am aware that this is not a very popular emulator among most gamers in comparison to ZSNES and SNES9x, and they have fixed this bug in the new release of ZSNES. Logic only tells me that ZSNES users who stay up-to-date are going to upgrade or at least try the upgrade. Not to mention, bSNES tries in every respect to be hardware-accurate, and does a wonderful job of doing so thus far, and already has echo delay limits as what it should be.
My point in the above is, just because I am using SNESGT v0.218 which has this flaw and allows me to have an echo delay over $04, does not mean I should expect other people to switch to an emulator that has the echo delay flaw to be able to play the hack that uses the music. There's a lot of variety in SNES emulators and people pick what they want.
Even though I (and even if you) personally don't care for real hardware compatibility since the number of functional SNESes will gradually decrease over time, and not a relevant fraction of hack players have ROM copiers with which to dump hacks to cartridges anyways, or some other viable reason you can think of, like it or not, this is the future of emulation, and it just so happens that the developers of several emulators frequently used by people may care more about accurately mimicking the actual hardware's functionality (hence "emulator") than keeping a flaw that is "beneficial" to music hackers, and any emulator that can run SMW should be able to run a SMW hack just as well IMO. (So indirectly, I do care about real hardware compatibility. Heh.)
Fictional-but-realistic scenario time.
Let's take this from the point of view of a gamer who uses the new ZSNES and is not a SMWC regular - there are a lot of people who do not frequent SMWC to take into account in terms of people who could play your hack and probably will. He just removed his old ZSNES version because he likes the new upgrade. Later, he hears about this great SMW hack from his friend, and his friend's going on raving about what a ride it is from start to finish, so he has to try it and asks for it.
His friend links the download and tells him how to apply it, then he loads it up. So far, the game is great! He just beat level 1 and digs the design, and the visuals... he thinks it's going to run smoothly. Then, when he gets to level 2, suddenly, ninjas. Thousands of them. Making strange noises in the BG. They even stole the music. What in the hell is this?!
Then he understands that he really does have to downgrade or switch to another emulator to be able to enjoy the rest of the game as it was meant to be. Ummm... no? That would be a waste of the player's time, and take up more space on his computer/flash drive, all for one hack. How annoying.
Now, let's say that this was one of your ports that triggered the glitch. The player doesn't know it was your port specifically since he doesn't hang around SMWC, and the author of the hack receives the complaint which says it messes up in stage 2 on the new ZSNES. So the author, having read this announcement, forwards the complaint to you, to be sure you are aware that this is going to happen to other people who use your port.
The general idea of this situation will likely be commonplace, not infrequent. I'm going to end up revising my submissions some time soon, but probably wait to upload them when the waiting music count is down so it's less of a pile on the music moderators, and I hope more will do the same so that the bug does not become an annoyance to hack creators and players.
Azure's solution, which I am fairly certain would work if you adjusted the tempo and note values accordingly, is a reasonable alternative if an echo delay that you would otherwise have to sacrifice/alter is crucial in your opinion for the best quality while being functional.
Support +1 for echo delay to be taken into account in music moderation, in spite of the reduction of flexibility for echo delay. It's important, though, to allow as many people as possible to be able to play more SMW hacks without technical problems.
Just look above you...
If it's something that can be stopped, then just try to stop it!