[mk: the following text was copied from
https://github.com/MusicPlayerDaemon/MPD/pull/167]

For certain format (hi-res files) and normal buffer size hardware, The
hardware may at once consume most of the buffers. However, in Delay()
function, MPD is supposed to wait for 25 ms after the next try. it
will create a hiccup. The negative impact is much major than
increasing the latency.

I understand larger buffers come at a price. That's why in my earlier
commit last year I significantly reduced it. However, the buffer size
in CoreAudio is set according to the hardware, which is super small
latency. For instance, the system audio of 2015 generation of macbook
pro has maximum buffer size of 4096 samples, which is just 0.09s for
44.1k framerate, or 0.04s for 96k frames --- . compare to the 0.5 sec
latency alsa plugin has, even if we quadruple it, it's still super
tiny.