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@polybikeuser
When I saw these as the show I thought they were awesome, not convinced about the oversize logo, but apart from that spot on. I realise that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but they most definitely work for me.
I'm not entirely clear either on the exact benefit of the triangular tapers, at the show they were talking about increased surface area for contact between the axle and cranks, I do know enough math to realise that a splined contact would have even greater surface area. They're not the only people to have tried this, The Hive have tried something similar;
People also seem to be forgetting that for rather a long time a large part of Royce's business has been producing high end bottom brackets with an absolute emphasis on weight and stiffness, this isn't something they're new at. I understand that if you're starting with a clean sheet of paper it's easier/cheaper to get a stiff axle with a bigger spindle in aluminium or steel than to use something exotic like titanium, but titanium is Royce's default material and raison d'etre, so it's hardly surprising they're sticking with it.
I spoke to Cliff today and he's in the process of building a rig to do some comparative deflection testing of Royce's new cranks and the competition's, he seemed pretty confident Royce's cranks would come out on top and he sounded a lot more like an engineer (rather than a designer) who'd done his sums than a marketeer hyping his product. I don't claim to be unbiased about this, I've just ordered a set of 162.5mm cranks arms off them to put on a Schlumpf Speed-drive I'm putting on the recumbent I'm building for next year's P-B-P and I am paying for them, haven't blagged them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. Will let you know how I get on with them.
Earlier in the thread someone said something to the effect that CNC'd cranks were an outdated fetish of the 80s, a couple of years back Fair Wheel Bikes did a large and fairly objective group test of a variety of high end chainsets. A CNC'd EE Cycle Works chainset seemed to comfortably trash the competition, Cannondale also use CNC to make their Hollowgram cranks and Rotor use CNC to make their 3D cranks, both cranks with an impressive reputation for stiffness, so not sure that CNC'd cranks have had their day. I'm not suggesting that CNC is necessarily the best way to make a set of cranks, just that the alternatives aren't inherently better, just a different way of doing things.