advice on brightness

Dont try to fix your system with wires, first of all you may want to look at some different speakers, then some nice speaker wire. Next start to work on front end and try to wire intire system with same brand wire as much as possible! If your room is bright you may want to address this area also. I think the speakers are the problem. What ever you do dont try to fix system with wires, as you'll never get there! Hope this helps!

Inexpensive wires can easily cause HF sibilance, particularly silver wires. In order to eliminate this, you will need continuous cast copper or silver or what I call "Perfect Crystal" wires. There are no cables except maybe some Harmonic Tech that are like this and also in your price range. I would recommend looking for used cables.

Sticking with the same brand of interconnects, Straightwire Rhapsody II intercoonect is a warm, fully bodied cable. This should tame your HF problem.

Phoenix Gold uses continuous cast, single crystal copper--if I'm not mistaken--and it's very reasonably priced...

Sorry about your brightness problem. Unfortunately, the cure may be complex since any incompatability between your components could be the cause including your speaker cable and interconnects. You might want to try the Cable Company 1-800-FATWYRE in order to see if your speaker wire or interconnects are the problem. You can rent almost any brand from them for very little money which you ultimately get back if you purchase anything from them. I had a similar problem a few years back until I started using MIT 750 Magnum Speaker Cable. Also found Transparent Audio speaker cable made a big difference in the bright department. Welcome to high-end audio. Loads of detail, soundstaging, deep bass, etc. BUT! Creating a system that is a great synergistic match resulting in great sound that you can listen to for long hours - that my friend is the hard part.