Durable headphones

The exceptional thing about Shure earphones isn't that they never break or suffer from manufacturing defects (because they do). What is unusual is how Shure typically goes above and beyond when it comes to customer support. Nearly every story that I've read about a broken pair of Shures (and that's not many) has ended with a testimonial about how the company repaired or replaced the earphones for free, even though the warranty had long since expired.

Now that's service.

I'm not familiar with B&A, are they headphones, buds or in-ear?

Most earphone manufacturers will coat the individual wires inside the cords with some type of laquer or other coating. Normally, an electrical wire is wrapped in a plastic or rubber insulator for protection. Since stereo headphones need four wires (1-positive and 1-negative per speaker), using normally-insulated wires would result in a pretty bulky headphone cord.

Sometimes soldering the wire to the connection will burn away this coating, but not always. That's why I try to burn or scrape away this coating before I even attempt to connect the wire to the earphone speaker. If you really want to save yourself some trouble, you can use a multimeter to check the wire for continuity before connecting it to the speaker.

To the OP's question: if you want a durable pair of earphones, buy the ugliest pair you can find. Earphones are like cars: the ugly ones never die!