Plane frustrated!

I'm fairly new to woodworking but I love antique hand tools. I'm really struggling to get my planes and spoke shave irons sharp. It seems like I've never get there and I'm comparing myself to YouTubers and what I see is the following:

1. In virtually all the sharpening videos they say to sharpen with your more coarse Stone to you feel a burr on the back of the iron. Then you know it's time to move to finer. It seems like icannkt seem to get a burr.

2. General sharpness: I see them folks on YouTube take the iron when they are all done and shave their hair. I cannot be anywhere near that sharp.

I've done everything I know to do with the diamond plates. I have a 244 rough work a 600 and a 1200 plus I have three strops with three different compounds. I know how to keep the plates clean but it seems like I'm honing a given iron on them for hours.