simon.a.billington

It would appear to me that the Slicing side was used to set the audio to the right tempo.  By selecting FlexPitch it has reverted back to its original tempo.
If this is the case you can do a manual "time stretch" to get the audio back to the right tempo, or you can bounce it in place before changing it to FlexPitch.

Yep, markers are the way to do it if you have a Numeric Keypad.  You can press a number to jump to the first 10 markers and I believe its Ctrl+Number to get to the next 10.
This way you can zip around to any point on the timeline from the press of a key.

Sometimes this has to do with telling Logic what kind of "values" its working with. Whether it's Signed, Unsigned, 1's Compliment, 2's Compliment... if I recall correctly.
 
Short story, this is related to what "format" the values are transmitted in. Having the wrong format could possibly lead to the kind of behaviour you're experiencing.

Actually I believe they called the Vintage FET wrong in that article. I more firmly believe its based on an 1178. The two look similar, but the devil is in the detail. Plus it would make sense for Apple to not give us two versions fo the same compressor.
 
Well, the 1178 is based largely on the 1176, but it was stereo and also made further improvements on its design. It's not as common, but there are still a few old school engineers who own one. I believe Bob Clearmountain maybe one and Alan Meyerson may be another. If I recall correctly.

Yes the computer IS the dongle in a manor of speaking.

Reverb has a tendency to push things back. For in your face sounds you will want less of it. Though all your secondary, non essential elements can use a bit of it to help sink it into the background a bit. The contrast here can give the ear the audible cues it needs to identify something up close.
 
Consider harmonics and saturation on the “close” elements as well as it can help give a sound weight and presence also making it sound closer. Don’t sacrifice the transients though as they contain a lot of necessary information for the ear to help locate the proximity of a sound. Brighter and more transient rich sounds appear closer, while dull and more compressed sounds sound more distant.
 
So which compression can help, make sure you don’t over do it, or destroy too much of your transients in the process.

You can turn off the Audio Engine. Although you can’t effectiveely play or record anything, it will let you jump from one project to another without all those annoying loading times.