Beyerdynamic DT250s designed for studio and OB use
I used to work in local radio and the DT100s were the "workhorse" headphone for both the BBC and ILR. Not astounding sound quality (the later DT150s were better and I assume the 250s are better again), but the basic structure was rock solid and everything (and I mean everything) was repairable or replaceable - at a price.
Canford was the go-to place for spares, I dare say there are other places online these days. If your 80 Ohm transducers become a problem, a pair of 250 Ohm transducers will set you back about £80 I think (considerably cheaper than a new pair of headphones), and aren't that difficult to replace. I think the BBC now uses DT770 headphones which are likely to be just as repairable and comparatively cheap in their non-limited forms.
I think the OP was asking about "earphones", of which I have very little experience (the children seem perfectly happy with the cheap AV:LINK ones they had for Christmas a couple of years ago - though they prefer headphones for most listening), but on the subject of headphones, one of my kids has bought some
JBL Tune 710 headphones and is very pleased with them. They don't have active noise cancellation as far as I'm aware, but apparently they are good at cutting out external sounds anyway, and they have a 3.5mm jack socket so you can use them in wired mode even if the battery is flat. The sound is a bit bassy perhaps, but not overly so.
Personally I wouldn't normally rush to recommend "consumer" JBL kit because it's a "trendy" brand (a category into which I also put brands such as Beats) and "trendy" brands tend to have - as well as a price tag mainly based on their strengths as fashion items - not to put too fine a point on it a "non-flat" frequency response to cater for those with a bass fetish and shot hearing, but some of their professional kit is very good (apart from having imperial screw threads) and I have long been a big fan of their
Control-1 loudspeakers especially in
"pro" variant which has larger transducers and greater continuous power rating in (very nearly) the same size box because they are small, robust, relatively inexpensive and actually sound very good. You might not want them as the stereo pair on your Linn turntable, but they are fantastic as surround speakers in multichannel setups, kitchen speakers, classroom speakers, speakers you are going to throw around, that sort of thing. However, the awful ball-mount system breaks at the slightest excuse (they used to have a much better mount) and I've recently lost several (four out of the 20+ I use regularly) to "suspension rot" where the foam suspension around the LF cones has crumbled to dust; it's not economic to replace the transducers and a suspension repair is both very fiddly and unlikely to return them to "as new" condition. To be fair, those speakers were all around 18 years old, but I've never had this with any other brand; I've also lost four (out of eight) Control-5 speakers to the same issue and they were much younger - no more than 10 years old.
Back on topic, I quite like most Sennheiser kit. They do now have a
"trendy" (i.e. fashionable, expensive) range which could be a problem and I've found the ear pad coverings tend to wear very quickly on their cheaper headphones, but their
pro gear is excellent on the whole.
And don't get me started on Bose. The whole idea of Bose kit is that you can get away with unsuitable transducers if you "tune" the cabinets (particularly their "labyrinth" bass ports) and run the speakers from amplifiers with incredibly esoteric EQ, either that or pair tiny "speakers" with a bass bin (typical for their surround sound systems and portable PA). I first met Bose PA speakers in my radio days. The
802 used small transducers (PDF), an elaborately-designed cabinet and a "system controller" for the EQ. Yes, they were quite robust, but to my 25 year-old ears they sounded little better than
Tannoy horns. To be fair, Bose isn't unique in using these techniques, but certainly in the domestic setting they were a pioneer with systems such as the
Wave Radio which used 2½" drivers paired with a
labyrinth and claimed room-filling full-range sound.
I could bore all day on the dubious claims made by some fashion brands...
