Thanks @douardda much appreciated

Thanks @zaphodb,

following your solution below lead me to this bit of code in app_main

----- snip ------
#if (ESP_IDF_VERSION >= ESP_IDF_VERSION_VAL(4, 1, 0))
ESP_ERROR_CHECK(esp_netif_init());
#else
tcpip_adapter_init();
#endif
----- snip ------

Commenting out the conditional compilation ...

Thanks for posting this query @zaphodb

I have exactly the same experience with two examples from the adf example set "play_http_select_decoder" and "play_http_mp3".

My output is identical to yours. After some investigation it seems that execution halts in function "periph_wifi_wait_for_connected ...