From previously looking at the Packet flows, the issue is not really caused by an iDevice/iOS or Android device per se, it’s due the nature of Mosaic’s architecture; in how dCS Mosaic Control on your iDevice/Android works with dCS Mosaic Processor on the Streaming board in the dCS hardware.
It is the way it is by design. Normally, such query/response won’t take more than a few milliseconds, making it “invisible” to the User experience, but the amount of state information update required in some cases seems to drag it out into seconds (not to mention some less than ideal home network setups causing it to go beyond just 1 or 2 seconds).
Something like the Aurender Conductor I’m sure has a very different (and possibly older and processor intensive) architecture. Mosaic, as a whole, actually has quite a modern REST-based architecture.
ps:
By the way, just as a reminder to folks reading this thread. Mosaic Control is a control point that has absolutely no impact on the sound quality.
The dCS hardware is responsible for directly pulling down music streams, locally via UPnP or RAAT, or remotely via HTTP, completely separately from Mosaic Control. So, none of this discussion has anything to do with sound quality. 