Trouble understanding Spoken German

[cold solar]

It took me more than 6 months of listening to get to where I could understand Easy German Podcast, which is a podcast for German learners and thus already easier than podcasts for native speakers. It then took even more time to start listening to podcasts actually intended for native speakers, and I'm actually still working on understanding songs and TV shows 100% of the time, that's a whole other level above (podcasts for native speakers).

My advice is: you feel like you've done a lot of listening, but you probably need to do a whole lot more. Try Easy German Podcast, or Coffee Break German, or some podcast for learners. Once you've got those down 100%, try branching into podcasts for native speakers. It's a slow climb.

The other advice that I'd give anyone who is like A1-B1 (idk what your level is) is: get Anki or some app for practicing vocab, and drill vocab. You can't recognize a word that you don't know, and you need all of those first like 3000 words or something to cover most words you'll tend to hear in a sentence.

[ripe jungle]

well, guess I answered by myself: I ll still be using subtitles in the way I do, but I ll have to get used to various german voices. Anyway, thanks

[cold solar]

To put it into context: you said you were listening every day for between 15-30 minutes per day, and that was 1-3 months. Take a max of all of that, that'd be 30 minutes for 3 months = 90 days * 30 minutes = 45 hours of listening.

By comparison, I listened to all episodes of Easy German Podcast through episode 300, before I felt that I had a good grasp on them (and again, they're easier to understand than stuff for native speakers). 300 episodes * roughly 30 minutes per episode = 150 hours of listening. And I still had to work beyond that to understand podcasts for native speakers and such.