>>21230365It's not wired headphones/earbuds in general. It's cables.
Couple of engineering things, adequate strain relief, 3.5mm ports being placed in silly places, some devices suit right angled connectors vs straight, users handling them rough.
The last part is cable & jack quality, jack quality feeding into strain relief but cable too, you don't need to go starquad or anything but having a good cable helps.
Sennheiser have a headphone that had a cable that was always a bit of a meme, the steel cabe on the HD25. It's not very thick, it's not got super tough sleeving around it, it's a very simple cable connected to right angle jack. It's tough, it's a bit more rigid, doesn't coil the same but it's very, very tough.
I've had my HD25's since 2007 and the cable's only been replaced twice. I'm on my third. In 17 years I've replaced the screw that holds the cable in place once, the headband foam twice and the earpads 5 times.
Earbuds don't have these great cables, the cable won't be starquad or anything expensive because weight plays a factor and due to the nature of the design they'll be coiled & wrapped up many times. Eventually the strain relief will give out at one of the phones or the jack. Some designs get around it by having overear loops but that only fixes the issue at one end.
