How to connect my Cell Phone to my DAC?!?!

@rop45 Congrats man. My advice — Apple’s introducing their iPhone 14, and after that arrives go to their website and search for a unlocked, refurbed iPhone 11 that’s a great phone and you can probably get at a huge discount now that it’s a few generations old. I’ve bought all my family’s iPhones and iPads this way over the past 8 years or so and they’ve all arrived as new and have worked perfectly, and I’ve saved thousands of $$$. I’m still using an iPhone 6 I bought this way and still works fine, but I’ll likely now upgrade to a refurbed 11 for the larger screen and faster processor for about what I paid for the iPhone 6 many years ago. Just my $0.02 FWIW.

There may be something in the Spotify Connect app that isn’t allowing it to play into your DAC. Products advertise if they are compatible with Spotify Connect. Hegel probably is, thus everything works there, but your external DAC may not. So the problem may be with the expensive DAC and not the cheapo phone.  Investigate if your DAC advertises Spotify Connect compatibility.  If it doesn’t, than it probably isn’t 

Your computer can also load and play the dedicated driver for SMSL DAC (see instructions) that your mobile phone likely cannot.

@mahler123 makes a good point about compatibility.  Maybe your DAC just recognizes Spotify as an inferior source, which it is, and just refuses to play it, heh heh.  Seriously though, do a free trial of Qobuz (if available where you are) and see if that works, and if it does you’ll have even better sound.  Again, best of luck.