IMO the biggest reason to be optimistic that this will get this fixed is VR. GearVR had to rely on its own audio stack, but if VR takes off in a big way then I'

IMO the biggest reason to be optimistic that this will get this fixed is VR. GearVR had to rely on its own audio stack, but if VR takes off in a big way then I'm sure Google will want to support in stock Android, and that'll only work if they re-architect the Android audio stack to support low latency audio. This could end up fixing the issue for desktop Linux too.