Audio is one of the most real time applications. Most real time applications have much lesser time controls. If you are running a motor the inertia of the whole system means that you really only need to adjust the speed every few seconds. If you are running a stepper motor you need much better time controls on the steps, but that is typically done by a dedicated CPU, leaving the logic of what speed to go to something else.

Note, audio is about latency. Other real time applications need much more CPU power, but they can accept more jitter and latency.