When I first started brewing many moons ago, I directly pitched dry yeast after mixing it with a little sugar water and letting it sit. I never did get the results I expected and even kept the 1-gallon carboy in a temperature-controlled fermenting chamber. Many unhappy 1-gallon brews later and I swapped to 5-gallon brews and started using liquid yeast (Wyeast). (My favorite homebrew shop doesn't carry Wyeast anymore as they swapped to Omega. This is a little inconvenient as I made all my recipes around Wyeast, and the comparable Omega yeast from the charts taste different.) I've always been happy with the fermentation results from liquid yeast vs dry. I can't help but wonder now, was I doing something wrong with the dry yeast? I find that storing liquid yeast can be problematic as they are very sensitive. Sometimes the yeast is activated in shipping (RE: my most recent order that arrived a week ago). For storage longevity and cost effectiveness, should I be using dry yeast and doing a yeast starter with DME & nutrient? Is this all up to personal preference?