I have a 32ch non-midi board, bought 2nd hand for €2,400 in perfect condition.
I'm coming from a €240 board (don't mention the B-word ...
) into a €2,400 board... my guess is if I ever wanna improve the mixing desk it's gonna be x10 again
(lot's of other stuff to improve before that'll happen)
I'm not fond of lower end digital boards because of the sound. True, a non-automated board is harder to work with (recall songs), but in my opinion sound is more important than ease-of-work, and there's solutions to every problem (mine is taking digital pictures of the settings, works quite fast - 5-10minutes of recall)
Members in the same leage: Ghost, Midas Venice (and they're compact!), A&H (don't know these personally), or any higher end 2nd hand console... 15k is already a lot of money, but maybe it's better spent elsewhere, don't know your setup.
Herwig