Android sound bug

http://www.stencyl.com/help/view/playing-sounds-and-music/

Here I read:

On the Android target, playing sounds may be delayed by a quarter to half second on a small subset of devices, including the Galaxy S4. This is due to a bug in the underlying technology. We hope that this will be fixed in the future.

This is a big bummer, since the Samsung Galaxy S4 is the second most adopted Android device after the S3.

Does this mean EVERY sound has 1/4 or 1/2 delay there? Including sound effects? If it was just music I could close an eye, but if that's the sound effects as well, I can't!

If this is true I simply can't trust Stencyl as a mobile development tool, I'll have to switch to something else. It's just unprofessional to publish a game like that.

If this is fixed, I will trust Stencyl again. Meanwhile, I must resort to other tools, I'm not going to publish an Android game with half second delayed sounds on the second most adopted device.

This is Android sound bug. Not Stencyl.
Feel free to try whatever engine to combat this issue, or even code your game from scratch.
There will still be a delay.
People been complaining about this audio latency bug to Google since 2010,
even now, I don't see any fix on this issue.

You're telling me that all games have sound delay on Galaxy S4? All games made in Unity or any other engine? That any game I play on there, plays the sounds half a second later than they should? I don't have an S4 around, but I find it hard to believe.

all indeed here you can see the latency by phones on this graph http://www.androidauthority.com/horrendous-android-audio-latency-624171/

Most people use a workaround.
Just Google it. Its everywhere.

Here about it on the latest Unity 5.0 :
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30530120/in-unity-5-0-the-audio-for-android-have-lag-any-way-to-reduce-the-lag

Yes, but there's no workaround for Stencyl, right?

As for Unity, people are talking about 0.4 ms lags, not half second!! Huge difference.

I see solutions for Unity, but not Stencyl.

are you sure ? They're taking about 0.4 s not 0.4 ms, so it's the same (in the stackoverflow post)

Oh sorry, I misread. 0.4s, not ms.

I could find workarounds for Unity though, which I haven't tested but people say they work. But not Stencyl.

Maybe I'm overestimating the importance of the problem. I'm looking at youtube videos of games being played on Samsung Galaxy S4. I think the audio lag is noticeable, but it doesn't completely ruin the game as I thought.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LM-FUbwYKM

Am I imagining the audio lag in this video, or does it perfectly convey the issue? Go at 18:40 for example.

Indeed now that I remember, when I did a quick Stencyl prototype on a cheap Android device a few months ago, I had a feeling something was a bit off. The audio was probably suffering delay. It's a crappy Alcatel phone.

Workaround can be anything, try to be creative.
One solution for your sfx is to make it start earlier than the action, or add an extra frames before the real action.
For example, a character trying to swing a sword, make him prepare to swing the sword (start the sfx at this point) before actually swinging the sword. Maybe add a bit of fade in on the start of the sfx so the delay is not that noticeable.

In game development (or any creative field) there's always more than one solution to a problem.
When getting from point A to point B, if there's an obstacle in the middle, the only solution is not just to wait for the obstacle to vanish or try to brute-force it. You can also go around, or go above it. Try to bend the rules. Don't just think of everything in a linear fashion.