  In this paper, we focus our attention on the following question: How well can
we recover the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from the maps
of a given experiment?. Each experiment is described by a a pixelization scale,
a beam size, a noise level and a sky coverage. We use accurate numerical
simulations of the microwave sky and a cold dark matter model for structure
formation in the universe. Angular scales smaller than those of previous
simulations are included. The spectrum obtained from the simulated maps is
appropriately compared with the theoretical one. Relative deviations between
these spectra are estimated. Various contributions to these deviations are
analyzed. The method used for spectra comparisons is discussed.
