I have someones music file that is encoded with adpcm. I used his decoding function to decode the data from the file( read into an array of char) into an array of shorts, but Im at a loss as to what do with that data. How can I write the decoded data to a .wav file? I cant quite tell if the music is interleaved or not, but it doesnt seem like it is right now. I think my question may be a bit vague, so if you want any extra information I can post it.

well here is what I know so far.. The file contains a struct which has the following fields:

int frequency
int channels
short * data

but what do the channels mean if the data is one long array? Are the channels laid out in sequential order so if there are 3 channels then the first and second bytes of the song per channel would be:

0(1st) 1(1st) 2(1st) 0(2nd) 1(2nd) 2(2nd)

No, the samples are interleaved. That is, if you have a stereo wave, the data would be:

0(1st) 0(2nd) 1(1st) 1(2nd)

Were the first number is a sample, not a byte.

Are you trying that on the original sound file from the person, or a dump of the sample data after decoding?
Its just that, while sox can decode standard adpcm's, if his algorithm/file format is different, you should decode using that, then dump that as a raw file, and convert it.

edit: it seems like you are trying to convert the dump ('sample.raw') with adpcm format ('sox -a'), which isn't going to work. Either try '-a' with the original file, or try the dumped data without it.