Is there any way to do more precision transposing. I have some older recordings taken from cassettes whose pitch is just slightly off, I assume due to machine transport not being perfect or flaws in the copying process. I want to bring them back up into their originally pitch, which seems to be about a semitone out, but the transpose functions doesn't seem to allow that kind of macro tuning. I've considered using Melodyne, but trying to create a region that comprises an entire song, seems to crash the program. Any thoughts?

ive found it to be done sonar fairly easy but when adjusting pitch in old tape spool recording I found Audacity (free) does it fast and a little more control, faster changes.
I know some will argue with me about sonars transpose, pitch control, speed up/slow down techniques but simply put, I find Audacity does it easier. not saying I would switch from sonar to Audacity, im just saying each Daw has its tool.
someday sonar will enhance this feature, god knows its been requested 1000 of times through out the years.

Bear in mind that if the pitch is off, the tempo will be off too, so just fixing in Melodyne or some other pitch shifting algorithm isn't the best approach.  You want something that fixes both the tempo and the pitch at the same time, which has the added benefit of introducing fewer audio artifacts than just fixing the pitch would.  Look at Craig's Friday tip of the week #100 (also #20 and #99) for more info on this.
 
AMB
 

If the pitch is wobbling and the recordings are important to you (or your client), consider renting Capstan from Celemony. I think it's the only software of its kind.

Great info to have, I'll look over it all... Audacity seems to have worked, the pitch was so slightly off that tempo isn't too much of a concern, but others may be, so I'll look into other methods too.

See Week #20 in Friday's Tip of the Week. It will do exactly what you want when it's necessary to change tempo proportionately to pitch, e.g., because the cassette recorder's battery ran down.

Fantastic, thanks