Any tips on cassette tape players? I bought a Jensen walkman on Amazon ($35) and it's super hissy but these cassettes are from 1990, so don't know how much is the player.
I discovered that Izotope RX-8 Does a nice job of removing hiss, though at the expected cost in hi-freq content.
Nobody makes good cassette decks any more. You're better off buying a vintage deck from the 80s/90s. Newer decks don't support Dolby noise reduction which many tapes were recorded with back in the day, so they sound super hissy without it.
As another poster said, no one makes good tape decks any more and in fact virtually all of them are actually made by he same company. Techmoan has done several videos testing modern cassette decks and they are all pretty bad so you are much better off buying a used deck from the 80s.
I discovered that Izotope RX-8 Does a nice job of removing hiss, though at the expected cost in hi-freq content.