Sluggishness with libao as Output Method

[Steve Holmes]

I tried using libao as the audio output method for recent git pull of
speechd and find that when I'm in Orca, I find a good half second or
more lag in responsiveness when I use libao as the output method.
This includes interruptability of speech.  A good way to demonstrate
this is to get into a list of files in the file browser.  Then just
move up and down the list quickly and listen to what happens.  The
file name seems to speak soon enough but then as you go to the next
file quickly, speech doesn't interrupt immediately like I would
expect.  Now change the audio output method back to alsa and compare
the difference.  Theresponse is night and day faster.  I was
considering the use of libao to prevent some alsa device contention problems I
was having but this sluggish performance is unacceptable to me.

Has anyone else noticed this difference in performance?