Quote Originally Posted by luca_snipes
in a randomly selected album the image size is: 300x291, in another randomly selected one: 130x130. the differance in size shown here seems to have no affect on the speed at which things happen.
It's not the covers than, it's something else. It sounds like there is something special in your data that I cannot emulate. I am looking at the database consisting of 41,000 albums and opening album properties is nowhere as slow as 5-10 seconds you mentioned.

Here's one more idea to try if you don't mind. It will not make things immediately faster for you, but it may give important information so I can improve speed in next build. Create a new empty database and import one album from your main database (using Import and Export feature). It has to be the album that you know causes CPU spike and is slow to open. I wonder if you open album properties in a new database consisting of just one album, would it be slow?