Yes......and they do compensate. Truthfully, audio is such a basic (and old) type of disipline that it is very simple and a matter of course that potential problems from drift would be compensated for. No magic here. Maybe in very advanced circuitry well beyond the scope of audio using technologies that haven't been around for decades, but not audio. You can argue "what-if's" forever, but at some point reality sets in.

The disagreement is not on some theoretical or academic level - it is on boring 'ol rubber-meets-the-road practical engineering that is routinely performed, day in and day out. Your field is a bit far removed from designing audio equipment, and it is probably less mature, more complex and less well understood.