Glad you were able to fix it. Circle of the moon is reported as running perfectly so sound should be good. Did you enable wram i-cache and main memory i-cache? Which version are you using?
I can't speak from experience but EZ Flash Omega gets a lot of praise around here. Some reported issues about corrupting sd cards though I'm not sure that was resolved or even an issue. If not there's the Everdrive-GBA which costs a lot.
Also cost effective depends on what you need. You could probably get an older slot2 card without real time clock (RTC) support and other fancy stuff and save some money.
Really appreciate your patience and help. I am using the 3/28/2020 commit date version, dsp-audio branch, ARM9 DS. Is there is a better version I should be running, please let me know as I am new to GBARunner2 altogether.
Any links to cheaper slot 2 versions? I don't need anything fancy or expensive at all. Thanks again.