Comment by suchoudh

I do not have any good advice, only pain.

It turns out that a lot of old tape players have either failed completely or else add excessive background hissing.

Most tapes don't record all the way to the end so you will have to cut it digitally regardless.

I don't think there's going to be a better way than "find high quality player and decent capture device (e.g. Behringer), then press play a lot". It's possible that a truly dedicated process would capture off the tape head and then de-Dolby in software, but ultimately: it's a tape.