Safety Buffer - what is it?

Actually, I have had great luck running my system at 32. In fact, I have only run into trouble when I use the MOTU as my audio in/out. If I run from the headphone out, it works even better.

As a result of using the MOTU Ultralite as my interface last night, a set that had been just close to peaking but always working fine, now crackles. That lead me to mess with the saftey buffer. Clicking it on helped and didn't introduce any major sluggishness like going up to 64 did. However, I still don't know what exactly the safety buffer is doing. That's what I am curious about. Is it adding a buffering level between 32 and 64?

I use Mainstage to run the gigantic Scarbee Rhodes samples and I can run them at 32 on my system with very few clicks or pops. I am really impressed with Mainstage. It runs them better than Logic 7 did at a 32 buffer setting.

So, I am still not sure what the ramifications of using the saftey buffer are. I was having some trouble with sounds breaking up last night at a latency of 32. So I set the latency to 64 and things seemed more sluggish. So I went back to 32 and set the safety buffer. The break-ups stopped and it didn't seem as sluggish as it did when I set it to 64. So what the heck is it realld doing? Adding a buffer setting in between 32 and 64?

I read through the post on bigbluelounge that you linked and, to me, it doesn't sound like anyone is totally sure what the implications of using the saftey buffer are.