Not entirely clear what you mean when you say you connected “speakers directly to Zone 2.” Are you talking about the Zone 2 RCA jacks? If so that won’t work. Those are for connecting to an outboard amplifier, and then the Zone 2 speakers connect to that amplifier.
Alternately, if you have the speakers connected to the Surround Back/Bi-Amp speaker terminals, there is probably a setting in the receiver’s menu to assign those speaker outputs to Zone 2.
In addition, as adk mentioned, if your sources are only connected via digital HDMI, coax or optical, these probably won’t be sent to Zone 2. Most likely only analog connections will send to Zone 2. This is probably mentioned in the manual.
Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt