Dear Jeanette,
as David pointed as, as long as you don't need a low latency
for monitoring or real-time effects, there's no reason
against a larger buffer. You can even set it 4096 or even
much larger.
get a noticeable delay. With cards that can
potentially go down to 64
samples, I feel a - perhaps unreasonable - hesitation to set the period
higher. Is this very unreasonable?
Of course you get a delay in monitoring, but this doesn't affect recording,
except if you want to adjust the mixer in e.g. ardour. But even a delay
of 0.1s wouldn't hurt if it is sufficient to look at the meters simultaneously
hearing the performance and the monitors.
At least you could give it a try to see if it solves the problem.
Best regards,
Peter