diff --git a/TTS/bin/stt/create_tarred_dataset.py b/TTS/bin/stt/create_tarred_dataset.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..506c9260
--- /dev/null
+++ b/TTS/bin/stt/create_tarred_dataset.py
@@ -0,0 +1,134 @@
+import json
+import os
+import random
+import tarfile
+from dataclasses import dataclass, field
+from datetime import datetime
+from typing import List
+from coqpit import Coqpit
+from multiprocessing import Pool
+
+from TTS.stt.datasets import load_stt_samples
+from TTS.config import BaseDatasetConfig
+
+
+@dataclass
+class ConvertedArgs(Coqpit):
+    dataset_name: List[str] = field(
+        default="",
+        metadata={
+            "help": "Name of the dataset(s) or the dataset format(s). Provided name(s) must be implemented in `stt.datasets.formatters`."
+        },
+    )
+    dataset_path: List[str] = field(default_factory=list, metadata={"help": "Path(s) to the dataset(s)."})
+    output_path: str = field(default="", metadata={"help": "Path to the output directory to save the tar shards."})
+    num_shards: int = field(default=-1, metadata={"help": "Number of tarballs to create."})
+    shuffle: bool = field(default=False, metadata={"help": "Shuffle the samples before tarring."})
+    num_workers: int = field(default=1, metadata={"help": "Number of workers to use for parallelization."})
+
+
+@dataclass
+class TarMetadata(Coqpit):
+    args: ConvertedArgs = field(default_factory=ConvertedArgs)
+    created_date: str = field(default="", metadata={"help": "Date of creation of the tarball dataset."})
+    num_samples_per_shard: int = field(default=0, metadata={"help": "Number of samples per tarball."})
+
+    def __post_init__(self):
+        self.created_date = self.get_date()
+
+    @staticmethod
+    def get_date():
+        datetime.now().strftime("%m-%d-%Y %H-%M-%S")
+
+
+def create_tar_shard(params):
+    samples = params[0]
+    output_path = params[1]
+    shard_no = params[2]
+
+    sharded_samples = []
+    with tarfile.open(os.path.join(output_path, f'audio_{shard_no}.tar'), mode='w') as tar:
+        count = {}
+        for sample in samples:
+            # We squash the filename since we do not preserve directory structure of audio files in the tarball.
+            base, ext = os.path.splitext(sample['audio_file'])
+            base = base.replace('/', '_')
+            # Need the following replacement as long as WebDataset splits on first period
+            base = base.replace('.', '_')
+            squashed_filename = f'{base}{ext}'
+            if squashed_filename not in count:
+                tar.add(sample['audio_file'], arcname=squashed_filename)
+
+            if "duration" in sample:
+                duration = sample['duration']
+            else:
+                # TODO: not sure if this returns the right value
+                duration = os.path.getsize(sample["audio_file"])
+            count[squashed_filename] = 1
+            sharded_sample = {
+                'audio_file': squashed_filename,
+                'duration': duration,
+                'text': sample['text'],
+                'shard_no': shard_no,  # Keep shard ID for recordkeeping
+            }
+            sharded_samples.append(sharded_sample)
+    return sharded_samples
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    # parse command line arguments
+    args = ConvertedArgs()
+    args.parse_args(arg_prefix="")
+    os.makedirs(args.output_path, exist_ok=True)
+
+    # create tarring metadata config
+    metadata_config = TarMetadata(args=args)
+
+    # create dataset configs
+    dataset_configs = []
+    for dataset_name, dataset_path in zip(args.dataset_name, args.dataset_path):
+        dataset_config = BaseDatasetConfig(name=dataset_name, path=dataset_path)
+        dataset_configs.append(dataset_config)
+
+    # load dataset samples
+    samples, _ = load_stt_samples(dataset_configs, eval_split=False)
+    print(f" > Number of data samples: {len(samples)}")
+
+    # shuffle samples
+    if args.shuffle:
+        print(" > Shuffling data samples...")
+        random.shuffle(samples)
+
+    # define shard sample indices
+    start_indices = []
+    end_indices = []
+    shard_size = (len(samples) // args.num_shards)
+    for i in range(args.num_shards):
+        start_idx = shard_size * i
+        end_idx = start_idx + shard_size
+        print(f" > Shard {i}: {start_idx} --> {end_idx}")
+        if end_idx > len(samples):
+            # discard the last shard to keep shard size the same
+            print(f"Have {len(samples) - end_idx} entries left over that will be discarded.")
+        start_indices.append(start_idx)
+        end_indices.append(end_idx)
+
+    # create shards
+    with Pool(args.num_workers) as pool:
+        process_samples = [samples[start_idx:end_idx] for start_idx, end_idx in zip(start_indices, end_indices)]
+        process_args = zip(process_samples, [args.output_path]*args.num_shards, range(args.num_shards))
+        sharded_samples = pool.map(create_tar_shard, process_args)
+    sharded_samples = [sample for sharded_sample in sharded_samples for sample in sharded_sample]
+    print(f" > Total number of files sharded: {len(sharded_samples)}")
+
+    # Write manifest
+    metadata_path = os.path.join(args.output_path, 'coqui_tarred_dataset.json')
+    with open(metadata_path, 'w', encoding="utf8") as m2:
+        for entry in sharded_samples:
+            json.dump(entry, m2)
+            m2.write('\n')
+
+    # Write metadata (default metadata for new datasets)
+    metadata_config.num_samples_per_shard = shard_size
+    metadata_path = os.path.join(args.output_path, 'metadata.json')
+    metadata_config.save_json(metadata_path)
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/TTS/stt/datasets/downloaders.py b/TTS/stt/datasets/downloaders.py
index 8754dcec..469fee3d 100644
--- a/TTS/stt/datasets/downloaders.py
+++ b/TTS/stt/datasets/downloaders.py
@@ -1,12 +1,12 @@
+from tqdm import tqdm
 import glob
 import os
 from multiprocessing import Pool
 
+from TTS.stt.utils.download import download_url, extract_archive
+from TTS.stt.datasets.formatters import *
 import librosa
 import soundfile as sf
-from tqdm import tqdm
-
-from TTS.stt.utils.download import download_url, extract_archive
 
 
 def _resample_file(func_args):
@@ -15,10 +15,10 @@ def _resample_file(func_args):
     sf.write(filename, y, sr)
 
 
-def download_ljspeech(path: str, split_name: str = None, n_jobs: int = 1):
+def download_ljspeech(path:str, split_name:str=None, n_jobs:int=1):
     """Download and extract LJSpeech dataset and resample it to 16khz."""
 
-    SAMPLE_RATE = 16000
+    SAMPLE_RATE=16000
     os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True)
 
     # download and extract
@@ -68,4 +68,4 @@ def download_librispeech(path: str, split_name: str):
 
 if __name__ == "__main__":
     # download_librispeech("/home/ubuntu/librispeech/", "train-clean-100")
-    download_ljspeech("/home/ubuntu/ljspeech/", n_jobs=8)
+    # download_ljspeech("/home/ubuntu/ljspeech/", n_jobs=8)
diff --git a/TTS/stt/datasets/formatters.py b/TTS/stt/datasets/formatters.py
index 5d283848..73edf2fa 100644
--- a/TTS/stt/datasets/formatters.py
+++ b/TTS/stt/datasets/formatters.py
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ def librispeech(root_path, meta_files=None):
     _delimiter = " "
     _audio_ext = ".flac"
     items = []
-    if meta_files is None:
+    if meta_files is None or meta_files == "":
         meta_files = glob(f"{root_path}/**/*trans.txt", recursive=True)
     else:
         if isinstance(meta_files, str):
diff --git a/recipes/librispeech/stt/deep_speech/train_deep_speech.py b/recipes/librispeech/stt/deep_speech/train_deep_speech.py
index b10bf0b6..d25290e9 100644
--- a/recipes/librispeech/stt/deep_speech/train_deep_speech.py
+++ b/recipes/librispeech/stt/deep_speech/train_deep_speech.py
@@ -52,7 +52,7 @@ audio_config = BaseAudioConfig(
 config = DeepSpeechConfig(
     audio=audio_config,
     run_name="deepspeech_librispeech",
-    batch_size=128,
+    batch_size=64,
     eval_batch_size=16,
     batch_group_size=5,
     num_loader_workers=4,