Flutter SoLoud: How to reduce playback latency when syncing audio with UI (metronome-style)?

I want to play a short .wav sound every second and update a counter on the screen at the same time.

I'm using the flutter_soloud package and based my code on their metronome example from GitHub.

However, there's a noticeable delay (more than 250ms) between the UI update and the sound actually playing, even though I'm using:

• bufferSize: 256 in SoLoud.init()
• very short .wav files (mono, 44.1kHz)

Here’s a simplified version of my current code:

void initState() {
  super.initState();
  SoLoud.instance.loadAsset('assets/sounds/1.wav').then((value) async {
    tick1 = value;
    tick1Handle = await SoLoud.instance.play(tick1!, paused: true);
  });
}

void start() {
  timer?.cancel();
  timer = Timer.periodic(const Duration(seconds: 1), (_) {
    if (tick1 != null) {
      SoLoud.instance.play(tick1!);
    }

    setState(() {
      count++;
    });
  });
}

I also experimented with adding a Future.delayed(Duration(milliseconds: 250)) before calling setState() to delay the UI update and make it appear synchronized with the audio.

This kind of works visually — the counter appears more in sync with the sound — but it feels like a hack, and I’m not confident it would behave consistently across all devices or frame rates.

Is there a better way to accurately sync audio and UI in Flutter? I tried another packages like just_audio and audioPlayers, but with same result.