is the camera shake introduced by the slapping shutter in Canon's default firmware enough to notice or worry about

All AEB does is to set up a sequence of 3 shots with different exposures. Camera shake between exposures won't affect your images. Camera shake during a single exposure could obviously be a problem, but it's no different than when you're using the continuous drive mode. In particular, AEB doesn't say anything about shutter speed except that in some cases it'll use a slower shutter than what you have selected to increase the exposure in the brighter bracketed image. You can use AEB handheld just as effectively as with a tripod, provided of course that you're shooting at a speed that allows hand holding.

I'm not sure how Live View makes a difference in how the camera shoots with AEB: on my 6D, you have to trip the shutter manually for each AEB shot whether or not you're using Live View. Perhaps there's a setting (other than continuous drive) that will get the camera to shoot all three exposures automatically?

With all that in mind, the cases where camera movement might be a problem with AEB are pretty much the same cases where it'd be a problem without AEB: relatively long exposures. Here are some strategies that might help:

• Shoot in shutter priority (Tv) mode, where you can set the shutter and let the camera vary the aperture to change exposures.

• If shooting in aperture priority (Av), adjust ISO to allow a sufficiently fast shutter even at the longest exposure in the series.

• Use a sturdy tripod.

• If you're shooting at a shutter speed where you feel it's important to let the camera settle between shots, use a remote shutter release. A wired release is fine, but the 6D has built-in wifi and an app that lets you trip the shutter from your smart phone, so your "remote trigger" is always close at hand.

• Use lenses that have image stabilization to counteract minor movement.

I haven't noticed a difference in a few tests, but my test conditions weren't lab-quality

Maybe you're putting the cart before the horse. I don't use AEB all that often, but I haven't noticed any problems with AEB images either.