system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why when things crash does the audio continue to play?

There's probably different versions of this so feel free to answer either or. Perhaps the reasons are connected, perhaps not. 

Example 1: My phone crashed, nothing was working, screen was blank, buttons unresponsive yet my music continued to play. 

Example 2: in games like fifa and GTA when the game crashes the audio will continue to function and play on, sometimes even continuing to different songs even when the game is totally crashed and unresponsive otherwise.
gpt
Audio hardware is configured with a small memory buffer to hold audio data. The buffer is circular (ELI5 version), and the hardware will continue to play that buffer until it's told to stop. The software, or video game, or whatever, is constantly figuring out what has been played, and overwriting that with the next 1/4 second or so of audio. The hardware will circle around and play over the new data, never knowing or caring that it was changed.

So, when a program crashes, the audio hardware wasn't told to stop. It can't, the software died! It's just happy doing what it was told and playing that buffer, which is no longer getting updated, round and round.