another audio cleanup tool-chain - Reaper for noise reduction

In previous posts, I've mentioned using Cool Edit Pro and Sound Forge for audio cleanup. For audio with a lot of hiss, noise reduction with Cool Edit Pro produces a lot of artifacts. Reaper's ReaFir filter in Subtract mode is useful in such situations. For an old recording taken from a VHS tape, the following steps were used.

NR and gating in Reaper,

Then sweetening the sound using the EQ setting "30-band Punch and Sparkle" in Cool Edit Pro,

and finally RMS normalizing to -10 dB RMS with Sound Forge, choosing regions of roughly equal loudness.

Edit: 13 Feb 2020 - adding a couple of videos to demonstrate choosing regions of equal loudness by visual inspection.

and then normalizing them with keyboard shortcut Ctrl Y to speed up the process.