Quodlibet runs fine without gconf, as long as the user specifies "alsasink" or similar in their quodlibet config. The current ebuild depends on gst-plugins-gconf, which brings in gconf, orbit, etc., all of which are nice (quodlibet can query gconf for the desired sound sink) but are unnecessary and which bloat a minimalist config.
I just committed an update to the quodlibet-0.23.1 ebuild. It should be on the rsync servers in an hour or two. I made gst-plugins-gconf optional (with the gnome USE flag) and added logic to attempt to guess the pipeline based on the user's USE flags. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
