Russell,
I can share my experiences with both the Zenith 852s and the Lii Crystal 10s. Not sure how much it will help but the short answer is I have the 852's and I am going to buy a set of the Crystal 10s. Background is:
- I am running the Zeniths in open baffle with 15" driver woofer support for the lowest frequency.
- I have heard the Crystal 10s at the Decfest get together last fall and fell in love with the sound. When run in open baffle on Steve's new speaker baffles the clarity, transparency, coherency, etc was wonderful. It was a light on the bass and upper bass due to being on open baffle.
- Steve also had the Lii Audio Reference speaker on hand as well and wow! Talk about filling in the bass by using a cabinet. I was not able to spend a lot of time listening to the Crystal 10s in the cabinet but just sounded fantastic and balanced across the frequency range.
- So it is not an apples to apples comparison between Steve's demo system and mine:
- Decware system as I recall was his 25th Anniversary Amp ($2900+), Zrock ($780+),
and other components I do not recall (preamp maybe, a DAC being fed streaming
from computer, various Decware silver cabling I presume)
- My current system consists of Acurus A150 SS amplifier from (1995 - $600), Emotiva
Stealth DC-1 DAC/Preamp (2013 - $500), MiniDSP HD ($200), Dueland 16ga speaker wire
- I love what the Crystal 10s did in Steve's system - really the Zeniths do not compare that well. HOWEVER my system is not in the same league as Steve's so that factors in in a big way and until I upgrade my chain I just won't know what the delta really is between the 2.
Just my 2 cents - good luck with whatever you decide.