Hi! I always felt that ALG is too good to be true, so I decided to try it out myself. Reading other learners' reports has been really helpful to know what I'm getting myself into, but unfortunately there don't seem to be any detailed posts about German. Finally I can make one, so a long and detailed post it is.

Background

Native Russian speaker, learned English in school, had one year of French classes. At some point I also tried learning Mandarin with a reading-heavy approach and managed to get to intermediate plateau before losing motivation.

As for German, I haven't studied it at all, so I only knew some random words, e.g. numbers from one to three or Ritter Sport's motto. I am planning to move to Germany this autumn, which means that I probably will not be able to maintain the silent period all the way to 1000 hours. In the future it may become a problem, but right now it means that I have some extra motivation.

Notes

I did exactly what DS suggests: watching channels linked in the CI spreadsheet, paying full attention, not thinking, etc. One extra rule I've set for myself is that I must choose a playlist and watch every single video in order, unless it is about grammar. This rule allowed me to not spend time thinking whether a video is interesting or not, and instead to put more hours in.

My initial goal was watching at least one hour of CI per day, which I managed to meet. In fact, my current average is 100 minutes per day. What follows is my notes about the process that I wrote down at various points of time. Feel free to skip them if you are not interested in minute details, as I basically wrote what I wish I could read in other German learners' reports when I was starting out.

• 1 hour (first day). I started with "N>!atűrlich!< German", Total Beginner playlist. It certainly felt weird that I could understand about 90% of meaning despite not knowing a single word. I also managed to pick up some vocabulary from the context, although it's mostly English and Russian cognates. It is especially strange to hear Russian words in German, since my brain expects it to be English-like. The only problem is that sometimes when I infer the meaning of a word from context I involuntarily subvocalize it in English (and not in Russian, interestingly enough). Other than that, I think I'm doing a good job at not thinking. Also, contrary to what DS says, I have zero problems with hearing the sounds or word segmentation. If anything, German sounds like a Russian dialect of English or something. It kind of feels like I've been hearing this language for my entire life.
• 5 hours. Finished the total beginner playlist, now going through the pre-beginner one. The step-up in difficulty is real, although things are still largely comprehensible. I don't know if it is only because of cognates, but sometimes I manage to understand sentences purely from audio. It also seems like I'm starting to derive information from sentence structure. And I already have to consciously silence the din in the head, since it keeps rehearsing the phrases I've heard (sometimes in the teacher's voice, sometimes not).
• 7 hours. Finished the pre-beginner playlist. The difficulty was diverse, depending on visual information, unlike the total beginner playlist that had plenty of it. I still get completely lost when the host speaks complete sentences without any additional cues. Nevertheless, I could follow all the videos, despite missing a sentence here and there. Also I'm starting to notice some prepositions and conjunctions, contrary to what the DS roadmap states. The progress is still intangible.
• 8 hours. Now I'm watching super beginner ALG German. And... wow, that's repetitive. All the videos are about 4 minutes long, and after watching like 20 of them I can certainly say that "N>!atűrlich!< German" was more enjoyable, albeit it was more difficult and English proficiency was assumed. Judging by the titles, the rest of the videos are going to be similar, which is sad, since I'll probably go through them anyway. The main problem I have is that, because the content is boring and too slow, I can't help focusing on grammar. Not sure if that is a bad thing, since I don't really think about it.
• 11 hours. Finished ALG German's super beginner. Even though it is repetitive, it is still manageable. The only part I really dislike is the fact that videos (excluding the Italki promotion part) are like 4 minutes long, so you have to constantly click on the next one. My comprehension was perfect here, although the vocabulary range was really limited, so these videos were mostly about repeating the things I know. Also I kept noticing random grammar points and I can't help drawing parallels with Russian. Nevertheless, I only acknowledge the similarity and I don't think about it further. It is really difficult to not notice grammar at all when it has been drilled into you for 14 years in Russian, English, and French.
• 12 hours. Watching ALG Beginner, and it's comprehensible. I can certainly follow the narrative and understand each sentence (but not necessarily each word), and the number of familiar words seems to hover around the 95% mark. However, why does the entire playlist consist of "Which superpower would you choose"?... My boredom tolerance is high, but after 16 videos it seems a bit excessive. Afterwards I tried watching an Easy German's A1 dialogue, nope, not even close. Tried watching "N>!atűrlich!< German"'s beginner playlist --- while I can follow the story with a bit of ambiguity tolerance, sentences regularly go above my head. It is manageable, but for the sake of efficiency I want to stick with easier content.
• 14 hours. I have watched the entire "Learn German from 0" playlist by ">!Deutsch mit!< Lari". Not sure why it only has 8 videos, apparently there are older beginner CI videos too. As for comprehension, it was okay, I understood about 90% of the meaning. The words randomly appearing are annoying though, but I ignored them pretty well. The main problem is that my vocabulary is really limited, and the host doesn't explain the meaning of words (assumably you could see translations in the top right corner, but I covered it), which makes this playlist better suited towards level 2. The speaking pace is slow enough though, so I could comfortably hear every single word. As for compellingness, it was perfect, and the filming quality was surprisingly high for such a niche genre. Overall, it was a nice break from the whiteboard content, even if wasn't that effective.
• 16 hours. I decided to watch Comprehensible GERMANi's PreA1/A1 playlist. Even though there are words appearing on the screen, I can ignore them. The difficulty seems perfect: I can fully follow the story, even if sometimes I miss a phrase here and there. And it seems interesting enough so far, as evidenced by the fact that today is the first day I managed to do two hours of CI. Also, I think I can finally say that I did learn something: as I was watching a video today, I realized that I'm following the story without trying hard, even though there are almost no visual cues (in fact, I was barely looking at the screen to avoid reading).
• 19 hours. Finished watching Comprehensible GERMANi's PreA1/A1 playlist (except for reading videos, grammar, etc.). While these videos are certainly not perfect because of words appearing on the screen, I liked them, my comprehension was near-perfect. They are definitely not suitable for learners with no prior experience, because the visual cues are usually only about specific words, i.e. you cannot follow the story with visuals alone, but I think they are pretty accessible in the middle of level 1.
• 20 hours. Tried watching "N>!atűrlich!< German"'s total beginner playlist, that's too boring to rewatch. Then I skipped straight to beginner, and it seems pretty good. In particular, I can fully follow the story, even though sometimes I miss a phrase here and there. (Except for the Star Wars quiz video, because I don't remember the characters' names, and I couldn't reliably differentiate between names and unknown words)
• 26 hours. The Rammstein video is definitely not beginner level, also it has some language analysis. Other than that, I don't have much to say, since I just keep grinding and there is nothing I can complain about in those videos.
• 30 hours. I noticed an interesting phenomenon today: even though I don't pay attention to individual words, I can somehow predict adjective placement. And it happens even if I don't fully understand the meaning of the sentence or each individual word. My brain is just like "the next word you hear will be adjective", and it's always right. I guess it goes back to how I used sentence structure to assist understanding at 5 hours, but now it seems like I started internalizing those patterns.
• 32 hours. Finished "N>!atűrlich!< German"'s beginner playlist (except for the last video because it sounds language-focused). Except for like 3 videos that were inherently not beginner-friendly, my comprehension has always been nearly perfect. Afterwards, I decided to revisit the first video --- the one that I couldn't watch at 14 hours --- and it was fully comprehensible. I know, I know, rewatching is always easier, but from my experience if I don't understand something then there is no point in repeating it, as it will go over my head just the same. Thus, it is not simply a matter of familiarity. I tried to see what I can watch next, and it looks pretty dire:
  • Easy German still looks out of reach (and nearly all of their A1 videos seem language-focused).
  • Chill German and Eleos Corner were great, but these videos have words popping up all over the screen.
  • Extr@ seemed a bit out of reach, and I'm not sure if I want to watch it anyway.
  • Surprisingly, Learn German with Falk's A2 podcast felt somewhat comprehensible (~80%), but I think I'm overrelying on ambiguity tolerance, since it's way too early for audio-only CI.
• 34 hours. I settled on Eleos Corner. While those words are annoying as hell, I simply do not look at the video directly. Nevertheless, sometimes I may glimpse a word here and there, but I usually do not subvocalize them. As for difficulty, it's about the same as "N>!atűrlich!< German"'s beginner playlist, especially if you look at the screen (there are some visual cues, but words are all over the place, so I barely look at the hints). I have no problems following these videos with a bit of ambiguity tolerance/guessing.
• 35 hours. Finished Eleos corner's Easy Everyday German playlist. Not much to add, the videos are cool, although sometimes I lost the thread. Overall my comprehension was good, even though I focused too much on not reading the words on the screen. Afterwards I tried watching ALG German's intermediate playlist. I'm not a big fan of this format, and it feels like the vocabulary diversity is lower than in his super beginner videos. Looks like I won't watch these either. Ended up watching the remaining CI videos from ">!Deutsch mit!< Lari".
• 42 hours. Finished watching ">!Deutsch mit!< Lari"'s CI videos. Not much to say here, these videos are similar to the ones I've watched before, and the difficulty is perhaps a little higher. I'm not going to complain about words appearing all over the screen, since I did it plenty of times already. Now switching to Easy German's A1 playlist.
• 45 hours. This playlist has turned out to be pretty good, and it's got more than a couple of CI videos. I definitely cannot hear every single word, and sometimes I miss entire sentences, but the visuals help a lot. Hearing Janusz is particularly difficult, but it seems to be the point anyway. It is still unfortunate that out of 83 videos only 15 or so are not about grammar.
• 49 hours. Finished Easy German's A1 playlist. It got pretty easy towards the end (except for Janusz, he is too mumbly, and I could barely hear what he said), but it probably has more to do with the fact that beginner videos usually talk about the most basic things (food, clothes, simple actions), so I got used to them. I liked this playlist (or, rather, the aforementioned 15 or so videos), looking forward to the point when I can watch the A2 one. Also it should be noted that in most videos there are relatively few visual cues, but it didn't hinder my comprehension that much. As such, it is probably a good point to give Learn German with Falk another try.
• 50 hours. I'm watching Falk's Easy Listening playlist, and I can understand about 95% of what is being said. The weirdest part is that I don't recognize that many words, but I can still clearly comprehend nearly every sentence, although I may or may not rely on guessing. I don't remember ever guessing wrong though, so maybe it's something else.

The results

I know you haven't read the previous section, so here is the TL;DR version:

• At 0-19 hours I was watching super-beginner content.
• At 20-32 hours I was watching beginner whiteboard content.
• At 33-49 hours I was watching beginner vlog content.
• At 50 hours I was watching a video podcast.
• My comprehension of meaning has always been in the 80-95% range.
• By 20 hours I knew a vague meaning of all prepositions and conjunctures that I kept hearing, and by now I have some familiarity with sentence structures. Also I couldn't help noticing some verb-related grammar.
• Somewhere between 42 and 49 hours I started being able to follow slowly spoken German even if I barely recognize any words. The most surreal part is that quite often I can understand the meaning anyway.

As far as the DS roadmap goes, I think I am about halfway between level 2 and 3 (plus some function words). It seems like I basically skipped level 1, since I don't remember German sounding foreign at all, and I could always hear more than a random noun here and there, thanks to cognates. (I don't take into account the known words part, since I don't know how to measure it)

I also tried some benchmarks of my current level:

• A random news episode. I could understand like 10% of what was being said and like 70% of the story with visuals. It probably helped that I was familiar with the topic though. I am also surprised that they speak so slowly, pretty sure people talk faster in real life, let alone in news.
• Peppa Pig. In two episodes that I've watched I could understand 100% of the story and about 90% of what was being said. In fact, it felt pretty slow. Maybe I got lucky with the video, since, according to the DS subreddit, most people can only watch Peppa at 150-200 hours. Perhaps the German dub is easier than Spanish.
• Adventure Time. I watched one episode for about 3 minutes. I could understand about 40% even when taking visuals into account. Not really surprising since I remember struggling to watch it in English without subtitles.
• I still get completely lost when people talk at a normal pace, especially when they mumble or the sound is not clear.

Conclusion

So, in the beginning I said I was skeptical about ALG; in particular, I wasn't sure you could develop a listening ability from scratch in the amount of time stated in the DS roadmap. Needless to say, I don't have any doubts now.

Actually, not exactly, since I find it suspicious that I seem to progress at twice the intended speed. While it obviously helps that I speak Russian, it is still nowhere near as closely related to German as e.g. French and Spanish. I'm inclined to believe that I simply rely too much on guessing, and my real comprehension is lower than I think. Not that it matters, since, at the end of the day, comprehension is comprehension, even if it is backed up by guessing.

Nevertheless, it still feels illegal that after one month of just watching videos I can already comprehend native content, even if it is aimed at toddlers.

I hope this post will be a useful point of reference for the results you can expect from ALG. See you at 150 hours!

P.S. Since my account is new, Reddit didn't let me make this post for quite some time. As a result, at the moment of posting I am already at 148 hours. Feel free to ask any questions, but keep in mind that I have already forgotten what it was like at 50 hours :(.