My guess is that the large buffers are covering up for scheduling issues. On my devices (Moto X, Nexus 7) I can regularly get Android audio to stutter by connecting the power or switching apps. (And it'll happen on its own sometimes when it picks, as it so often does, a terrible time to update apps.)
The easy fix to that is to make the buffers bigger. Doing that, though, increases latency. The hard fix is to do what Apple has done and build for audio from the ground up.
The easy fix to that is to make the buffers bigger. Doing that, though, increases latency. The hard fix is to do what Apple has done and build for audio from the ground up.