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Well, processing ~400K of data per sec shouldn't hurt that much. Still it should be optimized, but there are much worse bottlenecks and CPU hoggers inside (ie. look at X, some of the drivers, or some of the GUI kits)...
It could make the difference between smooth audio and audible pops and clicks even under moderate system load.
One thing to consider is the user experience - not only if the system is being used most efficiently but what parts of the system would become most annoying if they were not.
Audio is something you would notice far, far more (clicks and pops and breaks in music) than a slightly blocky video or some extraneous redraw in X. You might notice most media players - intentionally or otherwise - will spend more effort resynchronising audio and keeping it smooth than rendering every frame of a video (since 22 frames out of 24 isn't that noticable, but even a 1/50 of a second of missing audio is VERY noticable).
The audio driver isn't currently capable of high quality playback without skips and pops under moderate load, so this is something to fix. I have no qualms whatsoever with the quality of the Radeon X.org driver in comparison :D