Helium Converter 3.4.88

Helium Converter is a free Windows program that moves audio files between the common lossless and lossy formats, and carries the tags across with them.

It comes from Imploded Software, the developer behind the paid Helium music manager, and there is no trial timer, no locked feature and no upgrade nag.

Version 3.4.88 is a 9.39MB installer dated 5 August 2026.

What Helium Converter Actually Does

You point it at single files or at whole folders, choose one output format, and it works through the queue in a single pass. There is no per-file setup, which is what makes it quick across a few hundred tracks.

Tag data travels with the audio, so artist, album, track numbers and embedded cover art all survive the trip and a converted folder still sorts correctly in your player. Most output formats also support non-destructive volume normalising, set per encoder rather than once for everything.

A built-in inspection tool lists every audio and tag field for a selected file, attached pictures included, which is a fast way to see what you actually have before you convert it. You can see it in the two screenshots of the converter window on this page.

One hard limit: copy-protected files bought from a music store will not convert, because DRM is not supported.

What It Reads Is Not What It Writes

This is the detail that decides whether the program is any use to you, and most converter pages skip it. Helium Converter opens a wider list of formats than it can save to.

So a folder of APE or DSD files can become FLAC or MP3, but not the other way round. Reading DSD at all is unusual in free software, and it is one of the quieter reasons collectors keep this one installed.

If FLAC is where you are heading, the FLAC reference tools are the official command-line versions, and our guide to FLAC explains what you gain and give up.

Why the Tag Handling Matters More Than the Speed

Plenty of free converters produce a technically correct MP3 and hand it back named track01.mp3, with no artist, no album and no artwork. Rebuilding that across a few hundred files by hand is the part that actually costs you an evening.

Helium Converter copies the metadata as part of the job, and that is the single best reason to pick it over a bare encoder front end. Every converter claims to be fast; far fewer leave your library still readable afterwards.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is in your source folder. If the files show 24-bit or 96kHz in their properties, this is not the tool to run them through.

A reviewer here reported 24-bit originals coming back as 16-bit with no warning, and the program exposes no bit-depth setting to prevent it. For hi-res material use something that states the output bit depth on screen, such as dBpoweramp Music Converter or CUETools.

Fine encoder control is the other gap. If you want to choose CBR, ABR or VBR by hand, LameXP and fre:ac both put more of the encoder in front of you.

And if you already run foobar2000, you do not need a second program at all - converting audio in foobar2000 covers doing it inside the player you have.

Where It Fits With the Other Helium Tools

Conversion is one step of a longer job, and Imploded splits the rest across small free companions. Helium Audio Splitter breaks one long recording into separate tracks, and Helium Audio Joiner merges several files into one.

The usual order is rip or split first, convert second, tidy the tags last. If you are starting from your own CDs, Exact Audio Copy is the standard free first step, and there are more of them in Audio Editors.

Converting One File Without Installing Anything

For a single track, or on a machine where you cannot install software, our free online audio converter handles it in the browser with nothing uploaded anywhere. Installing pays off once you are converting folders rather than files, because that is where the batching and the tag copying save real time.

Quick questions

Download Helium Converter 3.4.88 and see how it handles your files, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.