Summary:
I have to add one thing to my previous review: the as-2620 has a strange volume circuit. If your signal sources deliver more than 200mV, you get distortion on volumes from -60 down to -80, but no distortion with louder volumes. Not a big thing, because -60 (atleast in my system), is pretty low. Very, very annoying though if you listen more than one person at a time and lower the volume to speak.. hello distortion. Other than that, it's a still a great unit which sounds great. I now have a later model from Proton, the 2631 with DTS - will be posting a review on that one.

Weaknesses:
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Summary:
This is a preamp I bought used only because I got it so cheap. It was a very pleasant surprise though as it is totally worth its retail price aswell. I'm not gonna throw any ridiculous hifi-words on you about soundstage and depth and all that bull that alot of idiots buy into. This is a no-nonsense preamp, without tonecontrols and DSP-modes. It does its job - and it does it great. The DD decoding is awesome, much better than that of a TEAC DD receiver I tried. As far as regular stereo goes - I couldn't be happier. I have, however, not A/B'd it fairly (in the exact same setup) against anything else. My guess is that it performs about the same as a middle class Rotel or similar.
It's not a preamp for the bass craving boombox people. No tone controls, no loudness thingies. No, this is a preamp for the people that want an integrated hifi/HT setup but hasn't got that much money to spend. As far as I'm concerned - this is where you start if you want a DD preamp that's good for regular HiFi aswell. More money will get you better stuff, but this one is really worth what it costs. (Can't say that about most receivers...)

A review I read in a magazine stated that this preamp does regular stereo so well for what it costs, that the DD and videoswitching parts of it should be considered a bonus.

Because I haven't A/B'd it properly against any similarly priced DD preamps, I can't give it 5 stars - it might be beat by something I haven't heard. Btw, the videoswitching works great - I don't notice any change at all to the picture. (It does both composite and s-vhs videoswitching, not component though, methinks)

It has all the inputs you'd expect, including 5.1 in case you would want DTS or something. DD-EX could easily be accomplished aswell if you have an old ProLogic amp lying around. As far as the 'Weaknesses' mentioned - it has 4 separate digital inputs aswell, AC3-RF, 2xCoax and 1xOptic, so if you for instance only use the digital output of a DVD, you _can_ connect more than 4 thingies.

Weaknesses:
Only 4 audio-inputs (CD+DVD+LD+VHS and it's packed..)