does aac > mp3 sound as bad as i'd think? (lossy ---> more lossy)?
Lately, I've been playing around a lot with taking wave forms from comprssed tracks, subtracting off the original track, and seeing/hearing what's left. In my experience, it seems like you loose a little bit going from lossy > lossy, but not nearly as much as you did in the original compression. So if AAC is bad, AAC>MP3 will be worse, but not 2x as bad.
(Again IME) you lose very very little if you transcode at a higher bitrate, going from say 128 kbps AAC > LAME aps MP3. When the sample is simple to being with, the compressor doesn't have to throw as much stuff out.