I prefer soaking them in hot water all the time--they soften up much faster that way.
I always weigh/measure them out dry & then soak them.
I feed cubes from a local mill so can't say which brands are softer...I do find that from this particular mill the alfalfa cubes are quite hard; the timothy/alfalfa cubes are much softer. They also make a #3 cube that is a miniature cube, only about 1/2" to 3/5" across--I really like those, but we can't always get them. They're much nicer for the big horses to eat dry, but I still soak them for the Minis.