[KHS]

thanks, i did similar things using calibre, converted between mobi, epub, pdf. in one case goint to mobi and back to pdf tricked it into showing music title on same page as staves

some different info to share. I has wondered for sometim if taking the pages for a single piece out of a pdf book via print to PDF options.

so yesterday I did some of the same extracts but using a pdf splitter instead

much staring at my monitor screen later - at piano-playing distance from screen, I believe that the splitter results are better .
 When a "print to PDF" runs, some processing goes on to scale source to fit an A4 page. Using a spliltter like the free one at ilovepdf bypasses that.

the pdf does get scaled when MS renders it to screen.. and certainly the "high" quality in MS is needed to match a side by side display in Adobe.

has it ever been asked if that high quality setting is cranked up as far as it can go ?
  as a previous gamer, I expect to see ultra, super duper ultra, insane.. etc in the graphics options

Not sure if this is directly relevant, but I often extract .PDF pages as image files (.PNG usually) for any necessary editing and then re-combine all those pages back into a .PDF using a Print-to-File "printer" within Windows. At least with he one I use (CutePDF), I am able to override ALL the presets for page size by selecting "Custom Postscript Page Size" (or something like that) in the Advanced tab and specifying EXACTLY what size (in inches or in pixels) I want the .PDF pages to be. This appears to avoid the scaling problem you mention.

I should add that if I've extensively edited and/or cropped the various pages extracted from the .PDF so that they're not consistent as to page size, I can use native Windows File Explorer to display "Length" and "Width" metadata and then Sort first on one and then on the other in order quickly to see the largest width I need to accommodate and then largest length and just set the customer page size to accommodate those 2 dimensions in "printing" the .PDF.. On a side note, make sure ALL your edited pages are longer than wide (even if you have to add some white space) or the Print-to-File "printer" will often rotate the page to make it "portrait".

If I've posted this the wrong way, I hope someone will put it where it belongs.