speaker cable that will soften the highs

You have to ask yourself what would cause a cable to do that -- then, if you are satisfied that it is possible and the reason can be ascertained -- look for a cable with those attributes.

Or, if you want to soften the highs because the highs are "hard" -- you might look into your room. I'd be willing to bet your room is causing the hardness in the highs and trying to treat this problem with cables will send you on an expensive merry-go-round.

Rather than trying to find a cable that will roll off the high end, I would hire an acoustical consultant for a few hours to analyze your room and suggest treatments.

Cardas Cross, Jena Labs, MIT

Resbeck's suggestions re room acoustics is a good one. A lot of brightness stems from 1st reflection points on walls, ceilings, and floors, as well as the amount of toe in used. Before you start spending money on cables make sure you have your set up down. If you want help, describe your room dimensions, openings, furnishings, speakers, present set up (location of speakers and listening position). Don't know that you need to hire a consultant yet though.

I agree with Rsbeck and Newbee. Occupational hazard thought, since we are an acoustical design group. However, I also agree with Newbee, that you may just have some very fundamental issues that you can tackle yourself. See our resource page for many articles on basic acoustics. Be sure to visit the listening room. It's a tutorial on basic room acoustics.

Rsbeck's comments are very good. I would add that not only can speaker placement, room acoustics and listening position change the tonal balance that you hear, but that component selection also comes into play here.

With all of that in mind, if you are looking for cabling that will "roll-off" the top end somewhat, try to find a "zip cord" type cable that has a wider spacing between the conductors. There are cables that are made like this with a built-in wide & flat plastic spacer located between the conductors. This is used in HT installations where cables have to be routed in a specific manner. Using this approach, the cable can actually be stapled in place by using the "spacer" material as an anchor between the conductors. Most HT installers are more than willing to trade off the customers wide-bandwidth performance and high levels of linearity for their ease of installation and convenience of using this high inductance design. For someone that wants to alter their frequency response in a non-linear manner ( softening the highs, warming up tonal balance ), this cable can do the job.

If you've already got some "budget" type zip cord of heavy gauge and don't mind experimenting, you can literally "unzip" the two conductors apart and spread them further from each other. This would be equivalent to what "shotgunned" cables look like i.e. an individual run for each polarity rather than having the conductor for each polarity in close proximity to each other. Whether or not this will give you enough of what you are looking for will depend on the rest of your system, the room and your seated listening position. Sean
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