Delay between stream and listener

We are often asked why there is a delay between the stream source and the listener, this is due to many factors which mostly come down to Quality of Service.

The shoutcast server itself stores up 1MB of audio data, when your listener connects to the station - shoutcast passes as much of the data as possible to the user to fill up the listeners player buffer for an instantanious connection (insta-connect™). In case the network becomes unstable or slow this buffer is than used to deliver a stable stream to your listener.

Is it possible to disable this?
As it seems, no it is not possible. Another reason for the above described buffer is due to the TCP protocol that shoutcast uses requires acknolodgement of each packet, this takes time to process no matter how fast your equipment is.