Speaker brand ELAC, which has received numerous awards for its passive loudspeakers, says it could release a high-end soundbar by the middle of 2018.

Christopher Walker, vice president of product development at ELAC America, said that the company was interested in soundbars as it was a growing category. ELAC designer Andrew Jones produced one of CNET’s favorite sound bars, the $400 Pioneer SP-SB23W, which is still in production.

“We could make a sound bar for $400 and we can make it sound really good” said Walker.

However he added the company was more interested in the higher end — a sound bar around $999 which would include more sophisticated features than before including HDMI switching.

While Walker didn’t confirm that the company was working on a specific model he said that an ELAC sound bar could potentially appear from the middle of 2018 onwards.

He said the company’s recent acquisition of Audio Alchemy meant that such a product would benefit from the know-how of Alchemy head Peter Madnick who has previously worked on AV products including Runco projectors.

Thanks to designers such as Andrew Jones home audio is undergoing a transformation right now with high-performance budget components now the focus for a lot of companies. By ELAC choosing to target the higher end with a $1000 sound bar and the imminent Adante speakers the company is likely trying to prove that it’s capable of more than “just” cheap, yet highly talented, speakers.