X

Elac could release its first sound bar by mid-2018

Elac America says it is interested in producing high-end sound bars and could have a model in the market by the middle of next year.

Ty Pendlebury Editor
Ty Pendlebury is a journalism graduate of RMIT Melbourne, and has worked at CNET since 2006. He lives in New York City where he writes about streaming and home audio.
Expertise Ty has worked for radio, print, and online publications, and has been writing about home entertainment since 2004. He majored in Cinema Studies when studying at RMIT. He is an avid record collector and streaming music enthusiast. Credentials
  • Ty was nominated for Best New Journalist at the Australian IT Journalism awards, but he has only ever won one thing. As a youth, he was awarded a free session for the photography studio at a local supermarket.
Ty Pendlebury
2 min read
Ty Pendlebury/CNET

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 (AU$829 or roughly converting to £300) 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 (roughly £755 or AU$1,240) which would include more sophisticated features than before including HDMI switching.

Watch this: Elac Uni-Fi UF5 are the best speakers under a grand

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 that are now the focus for a lot of companies. By Elac choosing to target the higher end with a $1,000 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.