I’ve managed to get it working
instead of following the “connect the audio" section of [https://mycroft.ai/documentation/picroft/picroft-audio/ 2](https://mycroft.ai/documentation/picroft/picroft-audio/ 2)
I followed the post https://community.openconversational.ai/t/major-picroft-update-moving-to-raspbian-stretch/4522/9
it would appear that in my specific case and for reasons unknown to myself using the unix socket is problematic