The original diagram's upper arm is a series resistor and capacitor; its lower arm is a parallel resistor and capacitor. The output is the upper-minus-lower voltage across that parallel arm. Assume an ideal input voltage source and an unloaded output. Their electrical impedances are
For this series-parallel RC band-pass filter, the voltage divider gives, with ,
Taking the real part of yields the steady output
Initial charging contributes decaying transients if the source is switched on at a finite time; the displayed expression is the sinusoidal steady state. The output polarity matters: reversing the indicated output voltage would multiply by .
For positive angular frequency, the squared amplitude response of the series-parallel RC band-pass filter is
Its denominator is minimized exactly when , so
This is a band-pass filter maximum produced entirely by the two RC arms; the drawn electrical circuit contains no inductor. The low- and high-frequency limits are
Thus the output amplitude tends to zero linearly with at low frequency and as at high frequency. In real time,
The upper series capacitor suppresses low frequencies, while the lower shunt capacitor suppresses high frequencies.