Revitalizing old tape recordings

[AlChuck]

I've got some old tapes I recently transferred to the computer. Now I would like to see what I can do to improve them. Hiss is easy to deal with, but I wonder if anyone has tips about how to improve the overall sonics?

The particular tapes were made with the onboard mic of a cheap cassette recorder in the mid seventies. I'm not expecting miracles, and of course I can just play around with EQ, but I thought perhaps some of you here might have some tips or guidelines.

Thanks in advance...

 

[Reggie]

One thing that could have been done at the time of transfer is checking the azimuth on your playback deck and adjusting it for the brightest sound you can get from your tape. Then you can experiment with highpass and lowpass filters and see how much unuseful noise can be cut out that way. If this is a voice recording, you may be able to use a parametric EQ to find the meat of the voice and boost it further above the noise. I've heard of people using the BBE Sonic Maximizer (or Aphex Aural exciter) on old cassettes with good results.