it’s not only how it sounds, but also how you interact with that sound: the interface matters.
while you can get similar sounding results with many machines, the interface dictates what can be easily changed (and therefore wil change often) and what is more difficult to change (and will be changed much less as a result).
The biggest difference between edge/dfam and electron boxes is that you’ve only got two sequencer parameter lanes, in stead of a set of triggers, with multiple parameter(locking)lanes on top of those.
The two analog sequencer lanes allow direct change of each parameter value on each step and easy allocation of a parameter lane to a different parameter to be modulated.
This differs from a digital sequencer in which you typically edit the value of one specific parameter for one specific step at a time, and it is rather easy to create extra prameter lanes with things as motion-recording etc…
This makes for a totally different way of playing a machine and hence for different results.
I’ve had a dfam, liked it a lot, but sold it because it was IMHO a lot of money for a so specific, limited but great sounding set of functions. I liked the way of playing with the 2 8-step lanes though. So i might consider the Edge at a third of the price. Great decision to put normal sized knobs on the sequencer, imo the mini pots cripled the dfam’s potential somewhat.