Embodiments of the present invention improve content manipulation systems and methods using speech recognition. In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method comprising configuring a recognizer to recognize utterances in the presence of a background audio signal having particular audio characteristics. A composite signal comprising a first audio signal and a spoken utterance of a user is received by the recognizer, where the first audio signal comprises the particular audio characteristics used to configure the recognizer so that the recognizer is desensitized to the first audio signal. The spoke utterance is recognized in the presence of the first audio signal when the spoken utterance is one of the predetermined utterances. An operation is performed on the first audio signal.