I checked your suggestions but nothing came up, all the tagging is consistent and correct. I've now realised what's happening though. JRiver is sorting the albums for each Album Artist by the Year column, oldest to newest. This is the pattern throughout all my view lists.
To test the default behaviour I right clicked on 'Audio' on the left and chose 'Add Library View...'. In the 'Add Library View' chooser it gives you large thumbnails of a selection of default views, I chose 'Albums'. I then right clicked on the new 'Albums' view on the left of JRiver and chose 'Customize View' and enabled the 'Always show files' option so i could view the list. I then reviewed the list and the default was again to display each artist's albums sorted by Year, this is overriding the album names (A-Z). So this looks like it's doing it by default?
Even when I customize the new 'Albums' test view using 'Set Rules for File Display...', add a new modifier under 'Modify Results' selecting 'Sort By' and add just 'Album Artist' and 'Album' in that order it still doesn't stop it sorting the albums for each artist by Year.
I have been very careful to ensure all my albums have 'Album Artist' tags assigned so using 'Album Artist (auto)' doesn't help. I did test this though, the album year still wins over Album Name. It sorts the albums under each artist by album name if the years are the same but if not then the year wins.
Love to know how I resolve this....