The infographic looked so much like an ad that I skipped over it.<p>So this is one of the &quot;good&quot; Android audio stacks, getting 36ms latency. But half of that is &quot;wasted&quot; in user space, in AudioFlinger as well as the app ring buffer (which seems pretty big to me). I&#x27;d like to see the comparison to a &quot;bad&quot; Android device.<p>Doing some internet searches, I found someone who had plugged in PulseAudio to an Android phone and got 20 ms latency instead of the 170+ ms latency from AudioFlinger on the same device [0]. That&#x27;s pretty huge.<p>Ideally, there should be no user space middleware component processing audio in between, this could half the latency (according to the diagram), bringing the latency to acceptable levels. But ALSA isn&#x27;t really intended for routing audio on the fly conveniently (e.g. when plugging&#x2F;unplugging headphones), so there is some room for improvement too.<p>Overall, the situation is pretty sad. Linux can do better than that but a modern multimedia device (desktop or mobile) has several audio outputs and hot-plugging, which makes the situation rather difficult using ALSA only. And the userspace audio components just aren&#x27;t great.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arunraghavan.net&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;pulseaudio-vs-audioflinger-fight&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arunraghavan.net&#x2F;2012&#x2F;01&#x2F;pulseaudio-vs-audioflinger-f...</a>