I didn't even know that mechanic still existed. I thought it vanished in 3.0. Shows how much I play my bard.

I'm too lazy to drag both my bards across the game to be in the same room together, but I'm 99% sure that Bard's cyclics do not interfere with other Bard's cyclics anymore. I don't know how it's handled if two bards are in the same group using FAE at the same time, but you can't join them together to increase the effect. My guess is that the lesser skilled bard is just gaining magic skills and the spell has no effect.