[natermer]

Jack is a audio daemon for Linux that performs a similar function to Pulseaudio, but is intended for a wholly different audience.

Jack is intended as a low-latency audio and midi router for audio production. It routes audio data between applications and whatever analog/digital/midi I/O you have plugged into it that Linux supports reasonably well. In other words it's for build a audio workstation.

So you could, provided you had the skills, quite easily create a audio processing pipeline that will do any type of 'beamforming' you want and more.

Pulseaudio on the other hand is designed as a general purpose desktop and mobile audio daemon that is designed to make it simple to manage typical hardware you find in a typical PC. This sort of stuff is designed to make it nice to have a webcam for simple blog or talking to your mom, not necessarily the best choice if you want to run a music studio from your laptop.