I will be interested in "hearing" how perceptible the degradation in fidelity will be when the Atrac compression is expanded and then recompressed to MP3. I expect the degradation to be audible, but it might not be objectionable. Adding effects could aggravate or mask the degradation, depending on what effects are used.

This concern applies to mididisc recordings using Atrac compression. There are also minidiscs that record without compression to a "data" format. However, I do not think these come in the convenient form factors.