1. A mobile device adapted for automatic speech recognition (ASR) and employing at least one hardware implemented computer processor, the mobile device comprising: an input microphone for obtaining speech inputs from a user for automatic speech recognition; an output interface for providing a system output to the user; and a local controller configured to: obtain a sample comprising non-ASR audio from the input microphone, provide a representation of the non-ASR audio to a remote ASR server for server-side adaptation to channel-specific ASR characteristics, obtain a sample comprising an unknown ASR speech input from the input microphone, provide a representation of the unknown ASR speech input to the remote ASR server, receive, from the remote ASR server, ASR results corresponding to the unknown ASR speech input, and provide, based on the ASR results corresponding to the unknown ASR speech input, the system output to the output interface.