Tim, I had a Rega to audition, a demo model with hundreds of hours on it. It was far from bright and edgy :¬)

Being honest, it was very similar to the Matrix Mini-I in terms of sound, which was also musical. Couldn't hear a difference between them with an instant A/B switch (Mini-I and Rega both fed into M-Stage powering HD650s). My initial enjoyment of the Rega was actually more to do with moving to a competent combination of DAC, AMP and cans, rather than the DAC itself.

Personal opinion of course, there may be some out there with different equipment which yields greater differences.