Is port lag from audio?

[Seabaron]

I play pirate on Blackbeard, and as any pirate knows Marsh Harbour is suk central for lag when the servers get just a little crowded.

Now Ive been wondering if the lag I suffer is from the audio or from drawing the avatars (NPC and PC)?

The reason I'm saying that is I notice when I turn in a quest, the quest completion music lags me to hell and back, drops my FPS to .50, I'm guessing.
And its just not shuddering FPS, it key-click/button lag too. I cant rotate the camera until the music stops playing, once that stops then everything is fine. I find that very odd.

Like most people I adjusted the number of visible avatars (40 and less).
But....their audio is still there.
For example, when I'm by the pirate trainer in the fountain square, I can still hear the fiddlers playing and people talking even though the avatars arent there.

I remember the devs talking about the music causing some of the lag and it would be fixed at release, I'm guessing it was boarding party release, because its nowhere near as bad as it use to be.

I'm just wondering if what we're (I'm) suffering thru isnt video card drawing lag, but maybe an audio bug causing lag? Or maybe a combo of both? (yes, I have a better than average PC)

Mainly I'm just curious why the audio sticks around when the avatars arnt drawn/loaded/whatever. And if that could be part of the problem.