Re: Board decision for mid-sized church
I don't think the list of wants and needs are detailed enough to pinpoint an actual product. Pretty much every board under 10K that has enough inputs would qualify as an acceptable solution. However, the limiting factor in the choices is 36 inputs. Since most consoles are sold in multiples of 8, (not counting aux ins, etc) this automatically jumps you from a 32 input board to a 40 input board. Anything above 32 is going to put you into a totally different class. This wipes out the Presonus or Behringer as options, simply because both of those are 32 channels max.
Now, in looking at sound gear for a church, you do need to consider who the operators are going to be. If you allow untrained operators, you either need a simple board to use, or one that can be locked down so that they can't screw things up. An analog board with a thousand knobs can be extremely intimidating to a new user, whereas a digital board with very few knobs can seem easy to a newbie, as they don't see all of the power under the hood.
Back to the requirement of 36 inputs. Is it critical that all sound is run through a single console? Sometimes, it's more economical to run two smaller consoles and submix to get what you want. Eg, the band can be run as its own system, with its own monitors and that mix gets sent to the main board. Of course there are trade offs in limited flexibility of this option, but it's something that certainly should be looked at to see if it makes more sense.
Before setting the budget line, the actual requirements of the system should be spelled out, and options chosen. If the requirements dictate a higher budget than possible, you then have to decide which requirements are going to have to be shaven from the list. Setting an arbitrary budget of $10K can result in a lot of wasted money if you're buying more equipment than is actually needed to accomplish the task. If you talk to a salesperson and tell them you have $10K to spend, chances are, they are going to direct you to something close to that price range, even if your actual requirements could be accomplished with something that is a fraction of that price.
