In my opinion this is by design and is not really a bug or issue for that matter as each record in jriver's "database" is based on individual files. This permits you to post different artwork by track for a mixtape for example.
Also to default to a single file is a good thing. When you want to tag anything you have to make a conscious effort to tag multiple files -- imagine pasting a new album cover to 100 other albums by mistake ....
If you want to do this in one step (although ctrl+a>right click>get art is not a real handicap imo), you should use a category/album type view (without the files showing)
and if you select an album it will auto highlight all tracks (or should^^). You can do as Jim suggests of course, but this is really two separate steps.
As for recent albums view - that depends how it was configured -- I can't check this as I have no out-of-the-box views left
(note: there
is an issue with some copy/pasting of metadata to list fields (and expression fields with "&Datatype=list" in that you have to have one item entered before pasting -
Its not an "inadequacy of hardware" (although slow networks and computers/NAS will take more time). There is a significant delay done on purpose -- otherwise JRiver would be saturating your network with requests + lots of I/O traffic (look at Devices=>Media Network and you will see whats going on^^). To do 2 terabytes on a slow network adding in this delay takes "the time it takes". Manual autoimport forces the process and takes priority.
O.T.: As a little aside, I personally think automatic tagging, either from JRiver automatically or even the top external ripping programs, gives usually far from satisfactory results other than the track names (except for maybe the most "popular" media files). Almost all databases from which people pull metadata including images are populated by people like you and me; directly through submissions or indirectly through "scraping" -- so Garbage In/Garbage Out. If there is no artwork, or it is low resolution - find it and submit it. You will be helping others
BTW, it's not just YabbDb, its FreeDB, MusicBrainz, Discogs and even Allmusic and GD3. That doesn't mean it is not a time saver for track titles. Personally I rip my media to a temporary directory, click manually on autoimport, check the tags and retag if and when necessary. But thats just me of course